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PALGRAVE CRITICAL STUDIES OF
ANTISEMITISM AND RACISM
The Russian Army and

the Jewish Population,
1914–1917
Libel, Persecution, Reaction
Semion Goldin
Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism
Series Editor
David Feldman, Birkbeck College – University of London, London, UK
Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism considers anti-
semitism from the ancient world to the present day. The series explores
topical and theoretical questions and brings historical and multidisci-
plinary perspectives to bear on contemporary concerns and phenomena.
Grounded in history, the series also reaches across disciplinary bound-
aries to promote a contextualised and comparative understanding of
antisemitism. A contextualised understanding will seek to uncover the
content, meanings, functions and dynamics of antisemitism as it occurred
in the past and recurs in the present. A comparative approach will
consider antisemitism over time and place. Importantly, it will also explore
the connections between antisemitism and other exclusionary visions of
society. The series will explore the relationship between antisemitism and
other racisms as well as between antisemitism and forms of discrimination
and prejudice articulated in terms of gender and sexuality.
Semion Goldin
The Russian Army

and the Jewish
Population,
1914–1917
Libel, Persecution, Reaction
Semion Goldin
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel
Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism

ISBN 978-3-030-99787-8 ISBN 978-3-030-99788-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99788-5
Translation from the Russian language edition: “Russkaja armija i evrei.1914–1917” by

Semion Goldin, © Mosty Kultury 2018. Published by Mosty Kultury. All Rights Reserved.
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hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my mother Polina Goldin and to the memory of my father Matvei
(Mordekhai) Goldin (1937–2017)
Acknowledgments
Many people and institutions helped me in my work on the book

and enabled its publication. It is my pleasant obligation to express my
enormous gratitude to them.
The basis for this book was my doctoral dissertation, defended at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Professor
Jonathan Frankel (1935–2008). It was my good fortune to have the
opportunity to study with this remarkable individual and scholar; it is
difficult to express how much I am indebted to him. My colleagues (Israel
Bartal, Ziva Galili, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Mikhail Dolbilov, Vladimir
Levin, Ilia Lurie, Hillel Kazovskii, Aleksei Miller, Scott Ury, and Shaul
Stampfer) read selected chapters or the entire text at various stages of my
work and made very valuable comments.
A historian’s work requires spending an enormous amount of time in
archives and libraries in various countries; fortunately I was received very
kindly in them. I am especially grateful to the staff of the Central Archives
of the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, in particular to Benyamin
Lukin, for their help.
Several grants provided support for my research and for work on the
dissertation and the book: the Nathan Rotenstreich Fellowship from The
Higher Education Council of Israel; Doctoral Scholarship and Ephraim
Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for
Jewish Culture, New York; Research Grant and Post-Doctoral Research
Fellowship from The Vidal Sasoon International Center for the Study of
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Warburg Post-

Doctoral Fellowship from the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar
Fellowship from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York;
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for
Russian and East European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The invaluable support of these and other institutions enabled me to
concentrate on my research and writing of the dissertation and book, and
it is my pleasant duty to thank them.
The generous and kind support of the Nadav Foundation and the
Shlomo and Bella Bartal Nonprofit Charitable Organization for the
Advancement of Historical Research in Israel funded the translation of
the book into English from the Russian original. My deepest personal
gratitude to Leonid Nevzlin, Olga Dolburt, Ariel Borshchevskii, and Tzvi
Yekutiel for their indispensable help.
This work is an expanded and considerably revised version of the
Russian monograph, Russkaia armiia i evrei, 1914–1917 (Moscow:
Mosty kultury, 2018). The English translation is the result of fruitful
collaboration with Doctor Stefani Hoffman, a remarkable professional
(researcher, translator, and editor) and excellent person. During the long
months of the COVID-19 pandemic, work with Stefani on versions of the
translation, corrections, and supplements to the text was for me a kind of
breath of fresh air and therapy.
It is my pleasant task to thank Professor David Feldman and Emily
Russell for professionally and kindly carrying through the publication of
this work at Palgrave Macmillan.
I dedicate this book to my parents: my mother Polina (b. 1941) and
my father of blessed memory, Matvei (Mordechai) Goldin (1937–2017).
The older I grow, the better I understand how much I am indebted to
them.
Note on Basic Sources
For my work on the book, I used sources primarily from the following
institutions:
Archive Collections of Military Authorities. Funds of the Russian State
Military-Historical Archive in Moscow (RGVIA) contain documents of
the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander (Stavka), headquarters
of the fronts, armies, military districts, and also of counterintelligence
divisions and military courts attached to various headquarters. The impor-
tant archives of the military authorities of Galicia are in the Central State
Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv (TDIAUK).
Archive Collections Assembled by Jewish Social Activists. From fall 1914,
the Information Bureau of the Jewish deputies working in Petrograd
focused on collecting material, documents, and reports concerning the
situation of the Jewish population of the frontal zone. The personal
archives of Jewish Duma deputies M. Kh. Bomash (State Archive of the
Russian Federation [GARF]) and N. M. Fridman (TDIAUK) contain an
enormous quantity of partially duplicate material from the Information
Bureau.1 Important documents can also be found in the collections of
Jewish social activists L. M. Bramson (TDIAUK) and S. An-sky in the
Manuscript Institute of the Central Vernadskii Academic Library of the
National Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (IR NBUV).
1 See also Iz nedavnego proshlogo. Rechi evreiskikh deputatov v Gosurdarstvennoi Dume

za gody voiny (Petrograd: Vostok, 1917).
ix
x NOTE ON BASIC SOURCES
Material collected by Jewish public figures was disseminated within

Russia and sent abroad (in 1916, the transfer to the West of documents
collected by Jewish organizations was carried out, in particular, with the
help of the Bolshevik courier A. G. Shliapnikov).2
In the post-Soviet period, the Jerusalem Central Archive of the History
of the Jewish People (CAHJP) undertook to copy an enormous amount
of archival material about the situation of the Jewish population of Russia
during World War I. This CAHJP collection of Xerox copies substantially
facilitated my work.
Publications of Documents. Additional important sources of material
are publications that contain documents selected from a vast collection
assembled in the war years by Jewish activists. This material was published
in the journals Evreiskaia starina 3 and Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii.4
Simon Dubnow’s publication in Evreiskaia starina had both a scholarly
and a political goal—to assure presentation of the Jewish Question “at
the upcoming world congress.”5 The very title of this publication goes
back to the tradition of publishing so-called “white papers” [in Russian,
literally white books] of diplomatic documents. The “Black Book” was
supposed to give a voice to the Jewish “unrecognized nation” suffering
from persecution in the war years.6 The publication covered events up
until October 1915 and included four sections: a report by M. M. Vinaver
at a Kadet party conference from 6 to 8 June 1915; a “Note about the
expulsion of Jews,” prepared by D. O. Zaslavskii; an anonymous “Note
2 Baron, The Russian Jew, 199. The illegally dispatched material, partially translated into
English, is located, for example, in the manuscript and archive division of the National
Library of Israeli (NLI) (V254). Some of these items are pieces of gauze fabric with text
typed on them. Professor Shaul Stampfer suggested that this fabric was sewn into the
lining of the courier’s outer clothing and thus illegally transported out of Russia.
3 “Iz chernoi knigi russkogo evreistva. Materialy dlia istorii voiny, 1914–1915 godov,”
Evreiskaia starina (henceforth—ES) 10 (1918): 195–296. On preparation of the Chernoi
knigi [Black book] by S. M. Dubnow, see Polly Zavadivker, “Reconstructing a Lost
Archive: Simon Dubnow and ‘The Black Book’ of Imperial Russian Jewry. Materials for a
History of the War, 1914–1915,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 12 (2013): 437–441.
4 “Dokumenty o presledovaniiakh evreev,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii (henceforth—
ARR), 19: 245–284.
5 ES 10 (1918): 195.
6 Ibid., 196. Cf. with the Black Book compiled by Vasilii Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg
during World War II. Corinne Ducey, “The Soviet Black Book. An unread history,” East
European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2006): 141–161.
NOTE ON BASIC SOURCES xi
about hostages”; and a “Note about pogroms,” prepared by G. M. Erlikh.

Plans called for continuing the publication in further issues of Evreiskaia
starina.7 The publication in the Archive of the Russian Revolution is a
selection of materials collected by the Information Bureau.8
Important sources are the protocols of the sessions of the Council of
Ministers of Russia: Arkadii Nikolaevich Yakhontov, who held the posi-
tion in 1914–1915 of assistant to the director of affairs of the Council of
Ministers, published the record of the sessions with his commentaries.9
This work was translated into English by M. Cherniavskii.10 My citations,
however, refer to the Russian text. The accuracy of this first publication
came into question with subsequent publication of Yakhontov’s extremely
short, genuine records of the council sessions; they indicate that the text
in the Archive of the Russian Revolution is more of a memoir written years
after the event than a documentary source.11
Calendar, Transliteration
of Names, and Geographical Terms
Until 1918, Russia followed the Julian calendar, which at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century was thirteen days beyond the Gregorian
calendar used in the West. This book follows the Julian calendar in matters
7 ES 10 (1918): 196–197. The “Note about the pogroms” listed the names of Jewish
women who had been raped during the pogroms, which evoked a protest from readers. In
particular, G. Kanel wrote to Dubnow from Moscow: “Imagine how these poor women
and their dear ones should react to the fact that their grief and shame is on display.”
Dubnow noted on the margins of this letter: “Culpa mea. Negligence. I would have been
ready personally to beg forgiveness from the martyrs.” Central Archive of the History of
the Jewish People [henceforth CAHJP], f. S. M. Dubnow, P/1, 10/3.
8 ARR, 19: 246. Unlike the publication in Evreiskaia starina, where the material was
processed with the goal of creating a connected thematic story, in ARR, the documents
(primarily copies of orders of the military authorities) were published without editing.
9 A. N. Yakhontov, “Tiazhelye dni. Sekretnye zasedaniia Soveta ministrov (16 iulia—2
sentiabria 1915 g.),” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii (ARR), 18: 5–136.
10 Michael Cherniavsky, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Notes of A. N. Iakhontov on the
Secret Meetings of the Council of Ministers, 1915 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1967).
11 Sovet Ministrov Rosiiskoi Imperii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny: Bumagi A. N. Yakhontov
(zapisi zasedaniii i perepiska) (St. Ptbg.: Dmitri Bulanin, 1999).
xii NOTE ON BASIC SOURCES
pertaining to Russia and the Gregorian in reference to events occurring

outside of Russia.
A modified U.S. Library of Congress system is used for the translit-
eration of Russian words. Russian proper names are given in their
transliterated form rather than in the English equivalent, i.e., Nikolai and
not Nicholas. Polish names appear in accordance with Polish orthography.
Geographical place names are given as they are spelled in post-Soviet
countries (Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, etc.). In instances when locations
had familiar Russian names, these are given before the current ones; for
example, Kovno—Kaunas; Vilna—Vilnius; Shavli—Šiauliai.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Russian Army and the Jews at the Start
of the Twentieth Century 15
The Army’s Role in Political and Social Life 15
The Russian Army and the Jews Before World War I 22
Draft Plans to Abolish Army Conscription of Jews 28
The Course of Operations and Structural Changes
in the Army 33
3 Army Authority and Activity in the Sphere of Civilian
Administration 41
Structure and Powers of the Military Administration 42
The Military Leadership and the Council of Ministers 49
Functioning of the Military Administration 55
Forced Evacuation (1915) 65
4 The Russian Army Command and the Negative
Stereotype of the Jew 73
The Russian Command’s Perception of Jews in the Army
and of the Jewish Population 73
Charges Against the Jews 80
Antisemitism of Russian Commanders 86
The Military and Right-Wing Press About the Jews 92
Reasons for Formation of a Negative Image of the Jews 95
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
5 Deportations of the Jewish Population and Hostage

Taking (1914–1915) 109
Total Expulsions: Rules and Reality (August 1914–February
1915) 109
Deportations as an Officially Approved Measure
in the “Struggle” Against the Jews 113
Expulsions from Kovno and Kurland Gubernias (April–May
1915) 116
Expulsions from Occupied Galicia 125
After Massive Deportations (Summer–Fall 1915) 131
Hostage Taking: From Single Cases to Policy 135
6 The Military Authorities and the Jews 145
Army Counterintelligence 145
Military Courts and the Jews 153
Administrative Expulsions 157
Military Censorship 163
A Ban on Movement 168
Jewish Suppliers and Contractors, Jews in Public
Organizations 170
Summing Up the Jewish Policy of Military Authorities 175
7 Soldiers, Officers, and the Jewish Population
of the Frontal Zone 179
Soldiers, Officers, and Jews 180
Pillaging. The Behavior of Cossack Units 186
Pogroms in the Battle Zone 192
Executions in the Frontal Zone 199
Servicemen and Women 202
Jews and the Non-Jewish Population in the Frontal Zone 209
8 “The Jewish Question” and the Political Situation
in Russia 215
Hopes of the First Months of the War 215
Russian-Jewish Appeals to the Authorities 221
Political Parties and the Jewish Question (1915) 227
“The Jewish Question” in the Russian Government (1915) 234
“The Jewish Question” in the Duma (1916) 245
9 Conclusion 251
CONTENTS xv
Appendix 269
Bibliography 271
Index 293
Abbreviations
AAN Archiwum Akt Nowych (Central Archives of Modern Records,

Warsaw)
AGAD Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (Main Archive of Old Records,
Warsaw)
ANLI Archives and manuscripts, the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
APW Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy (State Archive of Warsaw)
ARR “Dokumenty o presledovaniiakh evreev.” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii
(ARR), 19: 245–284
AVPRI Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (Archive of the Foreign
Policy of the Russian Empire, Moscow)
CAHJP Central Archive of the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem
d. Delo (File)
ES “Iz chernoi knigi russkogo evreistva. Materialy dlia istorii voiny,
1914–1915 godov.” Evreiskaia starina (ES), 10 (1918): 195–296
f. Fond (Collection)
GARF Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of
Russian Federation, Moscow)
IR NBUV Institut rukopisu, Natsionalna biblioteka Ukrainy imeni V. I.
Vernads’kogo (Manuscripts Institute, Vernadsky National Library
of Ukraine, Kyiv)
l., 11. List, Listy (Folio, Folios)
op. Opis’ (Inventory)
RGVIA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-istoricheskii Arkhiv (Russian
State Archive of Military History, Moscow)
TSDIAUK Tsentralny Derzhavny Istorichnyi Arkhive Ukrainy, m. Kyiv
(Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Kyiv)
xvii
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Elderly people from the Jewish alms-house in Anykščiai,

Kovno gubernia after deportation, May 1915 (Reproduced
from a photograph by an anonymous photographer,
with permission from the Central Archives of the History
of the Jewish People [Jerusalem]) 122
Fig. 5.2 Deported Jews from Kovno gubernia at the railroad
station, May 1915 (Reproduced from a photograph
by an anonymous photographer, with permission
from the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish
People [Jerusalem]) 123
Fig. 6.1 Photographs of two Jews and one Estonian suspected
of espionage, registered by the police (Reproduced
from Album of persons, noted by the gendarmerie, detective
and regular police as suspected of espionage, Petrograd,
1916, with permission from the Central Archives
of the History of the Jewish People [Jerusalem]) 147
Fig. 7.1 Russian soldiers and a Jew in the frontal zone
(possibly during a search), 1915–1916 (Reproduced
from a photograph by an anonymous photographer,
with permission from the Central Archives of the History
of the Jewish People [Jerusalem]) 182
xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 8.1 “Don’t be afraid of us, we are Cossacks from the Don. We
live happily everywhere – whether as guests or at home.
We won’t touch you, why should we hurt you, So all your
retching is for nothing!.” Moscow, Chelnokov’s printing
press, 1914 (Reproduced from a lithograph by Alexander
Petrowitsch Apsit [1880–1943], with permission
from the Museum of Jewish History in Russia [Moscow]) 217
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In one of the scenes in Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, a Cossack

in a Galician village humiliates an elderly Jew, forcing him to catch a coin
and then beating him. The scene arouses laughter among the soldiers
standing around and stimulates Yuri Zhivago’s reflections about the Jews’
lack of Russian patriotism. “And why should they be patriotic? Under
enemy rule, they enjoy equal rights, and we do nothing but persecute
them.”1
From the start of military actions in August 1914, the Jewish popula-
tion of Russia’s World War I frontal zone directly experienced various
forms of the Russian army’s hostility: local deportations, executions
on trumped-up charges, lootings, and beatings by soldiers and offi-
cers became daily tribulations. In the Austrian provinces of Galicia and
1 Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, trans. M. Hayward and Manya Harari (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1958), 119. Although the Galician Jew in this scene is probably an
Austrian citizen, Zhivago’s thoughts relate to the Jews of Russia. Cossacks, historically
inhabitants of the border regions of Ukraine and Russia (the steppes) over time became a
military class that served in special Cossack units in the army (usually in the cavalry). In
the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century the Cossacks were divided
on the basis of geographical origin into eleven “hosts,” the main one being the Don
Cossacks. See for more detail Shane O’Rourke, Warriors and Peasants: The Don Cossacks
in Late Imperial Russia (New York: St. Martin’s Press in association with St. Anthony’s
College, Oxford, 2000).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Goldin, The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914–1917,
Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99788-5_1
2 S. GOLDIN
Bukovina, occupied by the Russian army during the war, the local Jewish
population also became the victim of numerous pogroms and violent acts.
In January 1915, the supreme command of the Russian army issued a
special declaration that termed the Jewish population—of both Russia
and Galicia—an enemy, warning that harsh repressive measures would be
adopted against the Jews. The principal measure was massive expulsions
from entire gubernias, affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the
winter-spring of 1915. When the Russian army withdrew from Poland,
Ukraine and Lithuania in the summer-fall of 1915, a large-scale wave of
fierce pogroms swept over Jewish towns, and an enormous flood of Jewish
refugees inundated the army’s rear. In reaction, the Russian government
was forced partially to rescind the Pale of Settlement, thus implementing
one of the Jews’ main long-standing demands. These events were a
stark manifestation of the systemic crisis encompassing Russia before the
revolution.
Historians have chronicled the tragic events endured by Jewish resi-
dents living in the battle zone of the eastern front: the deportations of
hundreds of people, taking thousands hostage, and numerous incidents
of violence and pogroms.2 The destruction of the Jewish communities of
Galicia was the subject of a well-known book by the Jewish writer S. An-
sky,3 and contemporary scholars have also devoted considerable efforts to
researching this topic.4 At the same time, important aspects of this topic
2 See, for example, Jonathan Frankel, “The Paradoxical Politics of Marginality: Thoughts
on the Jewish Situation During the Years 1914–21,” in idem, Crisis, Revolution and
Russian Jews (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 131–156; Eric Lohr,
“The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence During
World War,” The Russian Review 60, no. 3 (2001): 404–419; Piotr J. Wróbel, “Fore-
shadowing the Holocaust: The Wars of 1914–1921 and Anti-Jewish Violence in Central
and Eastern Europe,” in Legacies of Violence. Eastern Europe’s First World War, ed. Jochen
Böhler, Wlodzimierz Borodziej, and Joachim von Puttkamer (München: Oldenburg
Verlag, 2014), 169–208; Giuseppe Motta, The Great War Against Eastern European Jewry,
1914–1920 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Academic Publishers, 2017); William
W. Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2018).
3 S. An-sky, Hurban hayehudim bepolin, Galicija vebukovina, vol. 1–4, trans. Sh. L.
Citron (Berlin: Stibel, 1929). See also an English translation: S. An-sky. The Enemy at
His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I , trans.
Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2002).
4 Alexander Victor Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland. War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish
Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005);
1 INTRODUCTION 3
still require special investigation: what in reality did the Jews experience
in the zone of the military authorities’ responsibility; how and why did the
Russian army declare them enemies in this region, where three-quarters
of European Jewry were living?5
I plan to answer the following questions in this book:
1. Why did Russian generals and soldiers, unlike their European

colleagues, consider it correct and legitimate to apply harsh repres-
sions against an enormous group of their own citizens?
2. What are the contours of the Russian army’s Jewish policy? What
were the changing parameters of the proposed measures regarding
the Jew and how were they implemented in practice?
3. How did the repressions against the Jews have an influence on the
army and the political situation in the country?
My book delves into background issues because in order to understand

the reasons for the army command’s behavior in 1914–1917, it is impor-
tant to survey the situation in the prewar years, when the army was in the
vanguard of the so-called “struggle” against the Jews, and also to compre-
hend the basis of the Russian army’s accusations against the Jews. It is
equally vital to analyze the broad powers that the army acquired in the
sphere of civilian administration, which gave it a feeling of omnipotence
and the opportunity to ignore the civilian government.
A genuine understanding of what happened to the Jews in the zone
of army responsibility requires an analysis of the application of the most
flagrant instruments of repression against the Jews: mass deportations
and hostage taking. This book, therefore, will survey the functioning of
military power structures (military counterintelligence, legal proceedings,
censorship, and so forth) with regard to the Jews.
Analyzing the conduct of Russian soldiers and officers toward the
Jewish population of the frontal zone will facilitate an understanding of
the influence of the army’s declaration that the Jews should be regarded as
enemies. Furthermore, in order to perceive the Jewish issue in the broader
Russian context of the time, it is necessary to examine the struggle of the
Mark von Hagen, War in European Borderland. Occupation and Occupation Plans in
Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007).
5 Wróbel, “Foreshadowing the Holocaust,” 172.
4 S. GOLDIN
Russian-Jewish elite against the army authorities’ anti-Jewish policy and to

review the attitude of the Russian government and political parties toward
the “Jewish Question” in the war years.
My analysis of relations between the Russian army and the Jews
during the war provides a basis for posing new questions and refining
already existing conceptions about the events of 1914–1917. I hope
to contribute to a deeper understanding of these issues through my
approach of integrating four separate disciplines that are infrequently
studied together: Jewish history, Russian history, military history, and the
history of antisemitism.
∗ ∗ ∗
Jewish historiography justifiably portrays the treatment of Russian Jews

during World War I as a saga of persecutions and suffering.6 Salo
W. Baron, notably, objected to the “lachrymose conception” of Jewish
history that reduced Jewish life (especially in the Middle Ages) exclu-
sively to a state of passive victims.7 Baron, however, did not hesitate
to ascribe such a narrative to the history of Russian Jews from 1914 to
1917, viewing these persecutions not as medieval vestiges but specifically
as a manifestation of modernity in Russia.8 For Baron, who considered
the modernity of his time a source of instability and direct physical
threat to the Jews, this was not a contradictory approach.9 According
to Baron, however, in the “abnormal” era of repressions, “normal” life
also continued, and it is important to ascertain what it entailed. Although
this book focuses primarily on the relation to the Jews of military and
civil authorities, soldiers and officers, and the political elite, the massive
6 See, for example, Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1965), 2: 94–103; Salo W. Baron, The Russian
Jew Under Tsars and Soviets (New York: Macmillan Company, 1964), 187–200.
7 With regard to the “lachrymose conception,” see Salo W. Baron, “Ghetto and Eman-
cipation,” in The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century, ed. Leo W. Schwarz
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964), 59–60, 63. See also Adam Teller, “Revis-
iting Baron’s ‘Lachrymose Conception’: The Meaning of Violence in Jewish History,” AJS
Review 38, no. 2 (November 2014): 431–439.
8 For greater detail, see David Engel, “Crisis and Lachrymosity: On Salo Baron, Neoba-
ronianism, and the Study of Modern European Jewish History,” Jewish History 20 (2006):
251–252.
9 Ibid., 249–250.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
number of documents enables us also to envision the life of ordinary Jews

under Russian army control. As the difficult situation in the fighting zone
continued for a fairly long time (around a year in 1914–1915 in many
regions, and around three years or more in other areas), the Jews had
to elaborate means of adapting to the extreme conditions. Documents
indicate, for example, that the Jews’ economic activity and their contacts
with Russian military authorities did not weaken despite the announced
anti-Jewish restrictions and measures. Moreover, a study of the political
struggle and lobbying by the Jewish elite in the war period clearly demon-
strates that the Jews, far from seeing themselves only as victims, in the
acute crisis situation even saw the possibility of positive changes in the
future.10
As a result of the war, millions of Jews, in the words of historian
David Engel, attached “unprecedented urgency to the very question of
physical security.”11 Often in descriptions of historic events, we track
complex processes and cite rulers, ministers, generals, and intellectuals.
Global events, however, are always reflected in the life and fate of ordi-
nary people. In the documents to which I allude, one easily can detect
the voices of Jews and Jewesses whose lives were changed and ruined by
the war.12 It is important to me that this book preserves the memory of
people such as Mariia Yosifovna Lifshits, a nineteen-year-old from Pinsk
who tried to denounce Cossack rapists; the merchant Mstibovskii, flogged
in Grodno at the order of a cruel general; the Sobol brothers, whose
father was shot by an officer during an expulsion from Smorgon, and
many other expelled, executed, raped, and robbed individuals.
∗ ∗ ∗
World War I, which ended in the revolutions of 1917 and a lengthy civil
war, destroyed the Russian state. In 1914, the Russian Empire had seemed
10 On the paradigm of the crisis, see Jonathan Frankel, “Crisis as a Factor in Modern
Jewish Politics, 1840 and 1881–1882,” in idem, Crisis, Revolution and Russian Jews,
15–18.
11 David Engel, “World War I and Its Impact on the Problem of Security in Jewish
History,” in World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle
East, and America, ed. Marsha L. Rozenblit and Jonathan Karp (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2017), 28–30.
12 For a similar approach, see Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War
and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), vii.
6 S. GOLDIN
indestructible; yet, three and a half years later, the regime fell, practi-
cally without resistance, and subsequently, the country collapsed. The
connection between the military operations and Russian social history is
still insufficiently studied; the best analysis thus far is the 1975 mono-
graph of Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 .13 Stone focused
on the economic reasons for the collapse of 1917,14 but no less impor-
tant was the gradual weakening in the war years of the state machine
and the widening vacuum of power in the country.15 An examination of
the Russian army’s brutal campaign against the Jewish population, which
caused enormous damage to the economy, finances, public security, and
also to the country’s international status is vital for an understanding of
Russia’s overall condition on the eve of 1917.
Eric Lohr and Peter Holquist formulated two possible explanations for
the Russian authorities’ treatment of the Jews. According to Lohr, one
can regard World War I as a “mobilization event” for Russia that changed
the ordinary societal rules. A result of this emotional mobilization was an
outburst of “sudden nationalism.”16 Whereas before the war, anti-Jewish
violence was perceived as an excess, in the context of the emotional,
nationalistic war mobilization, it began to be accepted as the norm. The
attitude toward the Jews in wartime should be viewed as an element in an
attempt to obviate alleged hostile population groups by destroying their
influence.17
Peter Holquist considers the processes that occurred in Russia during
the war years and in the period following the Bolsheviks’ seizure of
power as a natural and characteristic result of an approach to societal
change typical of modernity. Science of that time, especially demography
and military statistics, declared the population as the most important
13 Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London: Penguin, 2004).

14 Ibid., 283–300.
15 Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse, 6, 247–249.
16 Eric Lohr, “War Nationalism,” in The Empire and Nationalism at War, ed. Eric
Lohr et al. (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014), 92–93. Lohr utilizes an analysis
of the nature of nationalism proposed, in particular, by Rogers Brubaker. See, for example,
Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the
New Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19–20.
17 Lohr, “War Nationalism,” 102–104. The state’s effort to redistribute property and
its struggle against the “stranglehold” of Germans living in Russia, in my opinion, were
not applied against the Jews (see Chapter 6 for greater detail). In this sense, the Jews’
situation during the war was preferable to that of the Germans.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
resource, an object of study and transformation in the desired direction.

Using violence and punishments to oppose elements in the population (in
particular, the Jews) that were designated as “pernicious” and “harmful
and dangerous” became a legitimate and scientifically-based governing
technique.18
In my view, Lohr’s and Holquist’s conceptions to a great extent
complement each other. My study should help to clarify an underlying
question concerning the treatment of the Jews: what aspects of the army’s
wartime practices toward them were evoked by the circumstances of the
war and the need to react to them and what was the result of long-term
governing processes?
At the same time, a study of the “Jewish Question” during the war
offers an outstanding opportunity to view the complex configuration of
various rival groups and forces that enacted differing policies toward the
Jews. An investigation of the relations between military groups, mili-
tary and civilian authorities, and interest groups and influences on the
tsar in governmental circles reveals how, in actual fact, the systems of
authority and governance operated in Russia on the eve of the revolution.
Refining Lohr’s and Holquist’s models, I perceive the mutual neutralizing
of opposing groups and actors, chaotic decision-making, a lack of coor-
dination and planning when taken together as evidence of the lack of any
unified policy, whether reacting to wartime events or to long-brewing
circumstances.
∗ ∗ ∗
World War I was “the first total war between industrialized nations” in
which “whole societies mobilized against each other.”19 The mobilization
18 Peter Holquist, “State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet

Totalitarianism,” in Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population
Management in a Comparative Framework, ed. Amir Weiner (Stanford: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2003), 23–24. Holquist relies considerably on the ideas of Michel Foucault,
“Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham
Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991),
87–104.
19 Elisabeth Domansky, “The Transformation of State and Society in World War I
Germany,” in Landscaping the Human Garden Twentieth-Century Population Manage-
ment in a Comparative Framework, ed. Amir Weiner (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2003), 46. For a definition of total war “which ends only in the destruction or collapse
of one side,” see Roger Chickering, “Total War: The Use and Abuse of a Concept,” in
8 S. GOLDIN
thus encompassed the entire population, but in the process, the boundary
between the military and the civilian was erased. Elizabeth Domansky
emphasizes the attitude during wartime to both the civilian population
and the warring side:
… warfare included not only spontaneous outbursts of violence by indi-

vidual soldiers but also systematic and well-orchestrated attempts at forcing
populations into surrender through starvation or through psychological
terror, including atrocities against civilians. In World War I, such maneu-
vers were, on the one hand, the result of the political and military logic
and logistics of a total war that resulted from and in the collapse of the
barrier between the military and civil society.20
The army elite’s attitude toward the civilian population was formed
under the influence of the national military doctrine that spread
throughout Europe at the end of the nineteenth century that considered
citizens’ loyalty as a major component of national security.21 The obverse
side of this equation was the readiness to act mercilessly with preemp-
tive fierceness against the civilian population of a hostile country, which a
priori was acknowledged as an enemy.22
Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914, ed. Manfred
F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Förster (Washington, DC: German Historical
Institute and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 16. This war is also
justly termed “a laboratory” of violence and destruction, a direct predecessor of the prac-
tices of World War II; see Benjamin Ziemann, Violence and the German Soldier in the
Great War: Killing, Dying, Surviving, translated by Andrew Evans (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2017), 10.
20 Domansky, “The Transformation of State and Society,” 46. Cf. the definition of
total warfare of Erich Ludendorff: “an entangling of the civilian and the military spheres,
which had been kept relatively more separate in the prior century.” Mark von Hagen,
“The Entangled Eastern Front in the First World War,” in The Empire and Nationalism
at War, ed. by Eric Lohr et al. (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2014), 10.
21 Michael Howard, War in European History (London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976), 110; John Hutchinson, Nationalism and War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017), 36–38.
22 Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World
War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 19–24; John Horne and Alan Kramer,
“War Between Soldiers and Enemy Civilians, 1914–1915,” in Great War, Total War:
Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918, ed. Roger Chickening and
Stig Förster (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165, 167.
1 INTRODUCTION 9
In this sense, one can regard the Russian army’s hostility toward the
Jews of occupied Galicia in the context of the accepted attitude of an
army to the civilian population. Moreover, Bukovina and Galicia were
not sites of demonstrative acts of cruelty as those of the German army in
Belgian Louvain and Dinant or of massive murders of the civilian popu-
lation carried out by the warring sides in the Balkans in 1912–1913.23
At the same time, the extremely high degree of violence in the troops’
everyday conduct toward the Jews and the pogroms carried out by the
army, even if not officially sanctioned, diverge sharply from the European
norm.
The Russian army’s treatment of a sector of its own population as an
enemy party was also not completely unique: for example, the Austrians
similarly persecuted the so-called Moscowphiles in Galicia.24 Russia,
however, surpasses other European states in the scale and acuity of the
army’s measures against Russian Jews—hundreds of thousands deported,
thousands of hostages, and mass acts of violence committed during army
pogroms. Considering that the successful conduct of the war depended
on reducing possible harm from a disloyal population group, the army
command regarded repressive measures against the Jews as an optimal
solution.
It is worthwhile to compare what happened to the Jews in Russia in the
spring–summer of 1915 with the situation of the Armenians in Eastern
Anatolia: in both cases a population group was considered hostile and
threatening to the national interests of its own country, and the army
leadership adopted radical measures to eliminate the perceived “threat.”
Historians have noted these parallels.25 At the same time, there are enor-
mous differences: first, in Russia, it was not a matter of genocide of the
Jews (Mark Levene’s characterization of the Russian army persecution as
“sub-genocidal” strikes me as unfounded).26 For Talat Pasha [Mehmed
23 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 11–16, 21–22, 136–139.

24 Mark von Hagen, “The Entangled Eastern Front,” 28–29.
25 Ugŭr Ümit Üngör, Eric Lohr, “Economic Nationalism, Confiscation, and Geno-
cide: A Comparison of the Ottoman and Russian Empires during World War I,” Journal
of Modern European History 12, no. 4 (2014): 500–522; Mark Levene, “The Enemy
Within?: Armenians, Jews, the Military Crises of 1915 and the Genocidal Origins of the
‘Minorities Question,’” in Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace, ed.
Hannah Ewence and Tim Grady (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 143–174.
26 Cf. Levene, “The Enemy Within?”, 149.
10 S. GOLDIN
Talat], the expulsion and annihilation of the Armenians was “the defini-
tive solution of the Armenian question,”27 whereas the Russian military
showed no sign of such an idea. Apparently, however, the mass annihi-
lation of Armenians and Assyrians was not part of an earlier planned,
deliberate operation but was the result of the ongoing escalation of
measures that had been adopted.28 In Russia, on the contrary, the anti-
Jewish measures were modified when they reached a certain level of
aggressiveness and violence. Among the reasons that researchers give for
Russia’s backing down from repressions instead of escalating are successful
international pressure on the Russian government and the ability of the
civilian leadership to clamp down on the generals.29 This book shows that
in Russia, the civilian political leadership’s rejection of radical measures
prevented the expansion and escalation of repressions, whereas it was
precisely civilian leaders who ultimately issued the order for the mass anni-
hilation of Armenians in 1915 or the genocide of Jews in World War
II. In that sense, genocide is a function of civilian leaders’ political will,
not of the military leadership’s decisions.30 Thus, in Russia in 1915, the
preconditions for genocide were lacking.
∗ ∗ ∗
My analysis in this work of the Russian army’s relationship with the

Jews suggests the need for a recalibration of traditional meanings of
the term “antisemitism.”31 Among the Russian generals were individ-
uals who could definitely be termed ideological anti-Semites, as I shall
discuss in Chapters 2 and 4/later chapters. Antisemitism is manifest also
in the use of pejorative terms for Jews in official correspondence and in
passionate appeals to struggle against them. At the same time, General
27 Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and
Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 152.
See also Ronald Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History
of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 269–270.
28 Donald Bloxham, “The Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916: Cumulative Radicaliza-
tion and the Development of a Destruction Policy,” Past & Present 181, no. 1 (November
2003): 141–191; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, 153; Suny, “They Can Live”, 257–259.
29 Üngör, Lohr, “Economic Nationalism,” 520.
30 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 333–334.
31 Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkley, CA: University of
California Press, 1990), 311, 314.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Evgenii Radkevich, commander of the Tenth Army, did not call the Jews
by the derogatory term “Yids,” and before the war, he opposed the plan
to halt drafting of Jews into the Russian army.32 During the war, however,
it was Radkevich’s persistence that led the army to implement the mass
deportation of almost 200,000 Jews, viewed as potential enemy accom-
plices. From Radkevich’s point of view (and not only his, as, for example,
General Alekseev held a similar view), the repressions against the Jews
were not at all manifestations of “antisemitism” but rather the result of
a pragmatic and rational decision. We must, therefore, pose a question
about the very definition: can one consider as conscious “antisemitism”
any actions and measures objectively directed against the Jews?33
One of the main tropes of antisemitic thinking is a belief in the Jews’
omnipotence and their ability to rule the world from behind the scenes.34
As we shall see further on, this fear of the Jews was a factor motivating
the army to take measures against them. At the same time, however, this
anxiety produced other consequences: in the summer of 1915, Russian
ministers’ fear over the omnipotence of international Jewish bankers, led
to partial repeal of the Pale of Settlement. We thus see how one stereotype
led to opposing decisions, “against” and “for” the Jews.35
∗ ∗ ∗
Researchers understandably regard the events of 1914–1917 as the first

part of a lengthy period of chaos and violence, accompanied by the
collapse of empires (Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman)
in Europe and the Middle East, bloody conflicts and civil wars.36 In this
32 Radkevich was one of three generals, among 50 polled, who opposed the plan, which
was supported by the tsar (see Chapter 2 for detail).
33 For greater detail, see David Engel, “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism: An
Essay in the Semantics of Historical Description,” in Rethinking European Jewish History,
ed. Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rossman (Oxford and London: Littman Library of Jewish
Civilization, 2009), 48–49, 53.
34 See, for example, Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on
Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St. Martins Press,
2000).
35 On the combination of the Jews’ strength and impotence in World War I, see
Frankel, “The Paradoxical Politics,” 133.
36 Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End (New
York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2016); Sanborn, “The Genesis of Russian Warlordism:
12 S. GOLDIN
historical context, the Jews, too, following 1917, were the victims of new,
considerably harsher rounds of violence, persecutions, and pogroms.37
Can we, however, consider the events of 1914–1917 and the waves of
anti-Jewish violence in the following years as a direct prologue to the
Holocaust?38 I do not think so. My book shows that, despite the enor-
mous deprivations and suffering, the Jews of Russia (and Galicia) in the
war years were not at all in danger of total physical annihilation. In this
sense, if we wish better to understand the nature of the Holocaust, it is
important to note the absence of its sources in Russia during the World
War I period.
The Russian army’s attitude toward the Jews, at the same time, enables
us to reconsider the functionalism–intentionalism debate about the nature
of the Holocaust. Simplifying, one can say that, from the viewpoint of
intentionalists, the Holocaust was the result of a planned and prepared
process of destruction, whereas from the viewpoint of functionalists, it was
the culmination of an unforeseen development of events.39 The Russian
army’s expulsions and repressions against the Jews, whether a pragmatic
reaction (from the viewpoint of Russian generals) to circumstances of
the war or evoked by deep-rooted hatred, cannot be seen as the inten-
tion to commit mass physical annihilation. In this respect, a study of
the Russian army’s attitude toward the Jews reinforces the intentionalist
paradigm. According to that approach (as indicated above), genocide is
impossible as the result of technocratic rule of the population without the
corresponding ideology and intent.40
Violence and Governance During the First World War and the Civil War,” Contemporary
European History 19 (August 2010): 195–213.
37 For more detail, see Oleg Budnitskii, Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites,
1917–1920, trans. Timothy J. Portice (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2012); Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence; Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland.
38 For such comparison, see Prusin, “A ‘Zone of Violence’: The Anti-Jewish Pogroms
in Eastern Galicia in 1914–1915 and 1941,” in Shatterzone of Empires. Coexistence and
Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, ed. Omer Bartov
and Eric D. Weitz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), 374.
39 See, for example, Ian Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 238–248; Richard Bessel, “Functionalists vs.
Intentionalists: The Debate Twenty Years on or Whatever Happened to Functionalism
and Intentionalism?,” German Studies Review 26, no. 1 (February 2003): 15–20.
40 Dan Stone, History, Memory and Mass Atrocity: Essays on the Holocaust and Genocide
(London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006), 226, 230.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
At the same time, a striking aspect of the Russian case is the almost
accidental circumstances surrounding the adoption of the most impor-
tant decisions: the expulsion of 190,000 Jews was implemented because
of General Radkevich’s stubbornness; the most important declaration
of the Supreme Command was adopted in reaction to the note of a
petty bureaucrat.41 This shows, once again, the workings of the mech-
anism of historical events. They seem like the result of unplanned, chance
occurrences, immediately, however, incorporated into the ideological and
political context of the epoch—first by contemporaries and then by histo-
rians. In my book, I do not intend to dispute the conventional notion
that the Russian army was hostile to the Jewish population. I consider,
however, that an examination of the context and mechanism behind
events and an understanding of how these developments became possible
will render our understanding of history deeper and more exact.
41 Peter Holquist’s account of the preparation of the Supreme Command’s January

1915 declaration about “the Jews patent hostility” indicates that it was triggered by the
memoranda of a low-ranking foreign ministry official assigned to the High Command (V.
Murav’ev). Peter Holquist, “The Role of Personality in the First (1914–1915) Russian
Occupation of Galicia and Bukovina,” in Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in
East European History, ed. Jonathan Dekel-Chen et al. (Bloomington and Indianapolis,
IN: Indiana University Press 2010), 64.
CHAPTER 2
The Russian Army and the Jews at the Start

of the Twentieth Century
The Army’s Role in Political and Social Life

The Russian Empire, according to common belief, represented a mili-
tary power for which “the army was the cement that held this society
together,”1 and at the start of the twentieth century, “the army as a whole
gave structure and substance to the empire.”2 In order to delineate clearly
the Jews’ status vis-à-vis the Russian army, I shall first sketch the army’s
structure and position in society.
It is questionable, however, whether strengthening the army was the
chief priority of the Russian government. In the final decades of the
empire’s existence, military expenses were far from the main budget item:
from 1881 to 1902 these expenses declined from 30 to 18% of the
1 Jeffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (1552–1917) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997), 478.
2 Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the
Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April, 1917) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980),
1: 10.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Goldin, The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914–1917,
Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99788-5_2
16 S. GOLDIN
budget.3 At the start of the twentieth century, Russia expended 5.9% of

the GNP on military needs (France and Germany each expended 2%).4
The Russian War Ministry fought with the Finance Ministry for
increased allocations for the army’s needs but their requests were regu-
larly rejected by the civil bureaucracy, which did not regard these requests
as the highest priority.5
The Russian army was composed primarily of peasants (in 1913, 85%
of recruits were of peasant origin, 61% of them were illiterate).6 Soldiers
from the villages often found the food and living conditions better in
the army than at home. Physical punishment officially was prohibited and
prosecuted.7
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian officer corps swiftly
underwent democratization. The number of officers throughout the army
who were not from the nobility in 1911 numbered 46.7%, and in the
3 W. C. Fuller, Jr., Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 49.
4 Ibid., 57–58. The large size of the Russian army accounts for the high percentage of
military expenses. In 1893, Russia had 992,000 men under arms, compared to 573,000
in France and 521,000 in Germany (ibid.), 52. On the eve of World War I, expenditures
represented 24.3% of the Russian budget (in Germany—17.3, in Austro-Hungary—17.6,
and in France—28.6). Cf. N. N. Golovine, The Russian Army in the World War (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1931), 31.
5 William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia: 1600–1914 (New York: The Free
Press, 1992), 338–339. In 1893, the Russian army’s expenditures per soldier equaled only
57% of the sum spent by the German army per soldier and 63% of French expenditures.
John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression. Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905–1906
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 11.
6 David R. Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914–1917
(Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 2015), 33.
7 Idem, 37; Wildman, The End of the Russian, 32–33, 34. Conditions in the army,
nevertheless, were not easy: an army private received a salary of 2 rubles, 5 kopecks
annually, blankets and bed linen were distributed only in a few units, and a soldier
“was sated only in the case of a particularly decent and honest commander.” Aleksandr
Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni: vospominaniia voennogo ministra (Moscow: Kanon Press TS,
Kuchkovo Pole, 1999), 1: 475.
2 THE RUSSIAN ARMY AND THE JEWS AT THE START … 17
infantry, 56.3% (in 1895, the corresponding figures were 26.15 and
32.5%).8 The majority of officers received a relatively poor education.9
The social heterogeneity of the Russian officer corps was combined
with relative national homogeneity.10 Officers in Russia at the beginning
of the twentieth century felt like a socially isolated group. They scorned
the members of the intelligentsia, considering them smart alecks.11
Society did not attach much prestige to military service although an army
career opened possibilities of social advancement for impecunious non-
noble officers (for example, the careers of future White Army leaders, M.
V. Alekseev, L. G. Kornilov, and A. I. Denikin).12
The political views of the Russian officers’ corps were rather nebu-
lous. As a whole, the military was a conservative social force. Unlike their
colleagues in other modernizing countries, Russian officers, with a few
exceptions, did not understand that the country’s social and economic
backwardness predetermined the army’s weakness.13
8 Data from Wildman, The End of the Russian, 23. According to the data for 1903,
96% of generals were hereditary nobility, but only 10% of the generals owned hereditary
property. The percentage of hereditary nobility was higher in the cavalry and the navy
and especially in the guard units, where the officers represented a special caste (ibid.),
5–19, 22. In the Austro-Hungarian army in the same period, 72% of generals were
from the nobility as were 58% of cavalry and 14% of infantry officers. See István Deák,
Beyond Nationalism: A Social & Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 162–163.
9 Peter Kenez, “Russian Officer Corps Before the Revolution: The Military Mind,”
The Russian Review 31, no. 3 (July 1972): 226. In 1907, the General Staff published a
circular on the results of entrance exams for the General Staff Academy. An analysis of the
written work of enrollees revealed “very low-level literacy, crude orthographic mistakes….
Extremely poor knowledge of history, geography….” Cited in P. A. Zaionchkovskii,
“Russkii ofitserskii korpus nakanune Pervoi mirovoi voiny,” in P. A. Zaionchkovskii,
1904–1983: Stat’i, publikatsii i vospominaniia o nem (Moscow: Rosspen, 1998), 27.
10 In 1912, 86% of the officers were Great Russians (including Ukrainians and Belarus-
sians in this statistic); among the generals, Polish and especially German minorities were
relatively noticeable. Every sixth full general was an ethnic German (see Zaionchkovskii,
Russkii ofitserskii korpus ), 312.
11 P. Kenez, Russian Officer Corps, 230. Cf. in the memoirs of a contemporary officer:
“You often could hear a scornful, malevolent tone toward the army. The liberal intelli-
gentsia scornfully spoke about ‘warmongers’ the ‘soldiery,’ ‘goose-stepping’; the officers,
in their opinion were capable only of commanding: ‘one, two!’ while the soldiers were
deprived of rights, downtrodden men, in whom everything live had been knocked out
by ‘senseless discipline.’” M. Korol’kov, Grimasy zhizni. Vospominaniia voennogo iurista
(Novi Sad: Russkaia Tipografiia Filonova, 1929), 66. Cf. also A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia
russkoi armii (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatelstvo, 1999), 481.
12 Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 14–15.
13 Kenez, Russian Officer Corps, 231–232, 234.
18 S. GOLDIN
The government tried to keep the officers completely detached from

politics (in military academies it was forbidden to read any newspapers,
officers could not participate in the elections to the Duma).14 The offi-
cers, consequently, remained politically naive.15 The officers did not,
however, consider using troops against demonstrators or revolutionaries a
political act as they regarded it as the army’s duty to defend the Fatherland
against foreign and domestic enemies.16
There was a long tradition in Russia of using the army to suppress
disturbances and fulfill police functions; the bureaucracy perceived it
as the norm.17 Rules adopted in 1877 determined that if the local
administration considered that the police force was not coping with its
duties, troops could be called in to perform various functions. At the
same time, civil officials were not permitted to give orders to the soldiers
and had to deliver instructions via the army officers.18 In the period
from 1896 through 1904, army units called in to suppress disturbances
killed 196 persons; the troops lost 22 men.19 Cossack units in particular
14 Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni, 1: 442–443. The War Ministry Council discussed the
issue of officers’ participating in elections to the Duma. Some generals considered that
“it was desirable for officers to participate in elections, as they were representatives of
order and of conservative principles”; Nikolai II, however, agreed with the majority of
the council, which considered it “dangerous to draw officers into the political struggle
in order to gain their relatively few votes.” In December 1905, the Council of Ministers
forbade military personnel to take part in any political unions and parties, not excluding
monarchic ones (ibid.), 442, 528.
15 Kenez, Russian Officer Corps, 233. A. I. Denikin noted in his work, Staraia armiia:
“Military youth rarely took an interest in social issues, which struck them as something
alien or simply uninteresting” (cited in Zaionchkovskii, Russkii ofitserskii korpus ), 27. The
lack of a political education was starkly evident among the leaders of the Whites during
the Civil War. See Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919–1924 (New
York: Vintage Books, 1995), 22; Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, 462.
16 Kenez, Russian Officer Corps, 234. Austro-Hungarian officers displayed a similar
political insularity and ignorance together with a developed sense of caste. See Deák.
Beyond Nationalism, 6.
17 The soldiers filled in for a deficit of police cadres in carrying out policing and
guarding activities. For example, in Vladivostok until 1910, there were no policemen, and
soldiers from the garrison fulfilled those functions (Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii),
412.
19 See ibid., 88. In 1895, the army was used to suppress strikes in industrial
centers (Yaroslavl, Belostok [Białystok], Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and others) and in 1903 for
suppressing a general strike in South Russia (Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial
were deployed in major cities and industrial regions to carry out police
functions.20
The leadership of the war ministry was dissatisfied with the widespread
use of armed forces to maintain domestic order, considering that it
diverted the army from its natural task of guarding the state from external
enemies. In 1901, the Main Headquarters suggested new, clearly defined
rules for summoning troops only in the case of serious disorders.21
The Interior Ministry, for its part, did not intend to yield, demanding
the establishment of a special interdepartmental commission to review this
issue. The civil bureaucracy as a whole regarded the troops as an “instru-
ment for suppressing disorders” within the country22 ; for it, “repression
was one of the chief purposes (if not the chief purpose) of the army.”23
The Revolution of 1905 decided this problem by the unambiguous
subordination of the military to civil authorities.
The Russo-Japanese War, particularly the unsuccessful course of mili-
tary operations, strongly affected the army. The decline in discipline,
dissatisfaction with living conditions, etc., and the problematic profes-
sionalism of the command itself became starkly manifest.24 The army
suffered a serious trauma from the defeat in the war against Japan. Blame
fell on the Finance Ministry for not allocating sufficient funds for military
expenditures and also on the defeatist, “anti-patriotic” stance of the press.
Some military writers noted, however, that the “illiterate Russian peasant
soldier, ignorant of the purposes of the war”,25 was unable to constitute
an inspired army, filled with a fighting spirit.
The army, in fact, saved the empire from collapse during the revo-
lutionary years of 1905–1907.26 According to official data, in 1905,
Army), 31, 42. In March 1903 during the pacification of workers’ disorders in Zlatoust,
45 people perished and 83 were wounded (Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict ), 91.
20 Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 103.
21 Ibid., 110.
22 Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 42.
24 David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, “The Russo-Japanese War,” in The Military
History of Tsarist Russia, ed. Frederick W. Kagan and Robin Higham (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002), 183–202.
26 Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, 461.
20 S. GOLDIN
military units participated in suppressing 3893 disturbances; arms were

used in 311 instances27 (only in Minsk on 18 October 1905, over 50
people were killed and about 100 wounded).28 At the end of 1905,
generals vested with broad authority issued commands to restore order
in various regions of the country rocked by disturbances. Military units
in the winter of 1905/1906 suppressed armed demonstrations in Moscow
and re-established governmental control over the Trans-Siberian railroad
route.29 In the course of clashes with revolutionaries on the domestic
front, Russian troops carried out executions without trial and field court
martials in order to intimidate the opposition.30
The military leadership was dissatisfied with the widespread use of the
army to carry out police functions (including guarding police precincts).31
In 1908, at a meeting to discuss a possible military conflict with Turkey,
Defense Minister A. F. Rediger, noted that the army was unable to fight
because it lacked supplies and training, and he accused Interior Minister
P. A. Stolypin: “The army is not training; it is serving you.”32 Contem-
poraries noted the deterioration of discipline and constant alcohol abuse
among troops carrying out police functions.33

28 Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression, 80. According to the testimony of the then
defense minister, in the first ten months of 1906, troops were summoned 2330 times
by civil authorities; in 158 cases, they needed to use arms (Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni),
2: 82. In Warsaw in the summer of 1905, 3600 soldiers and Cossacks patrolled the
streets daily (Christoph Gumb, “Ugrozhat’ i nakazyvat’: russkaia armiia v Varshave v
1904–1906,” Ab Imperio 3 (2008): 178.
29 Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: A Short History (Stanford, CA: Stanford
30 Gumb, “Ugrozhat’ i nakazyvat’,” 192.
31 In answer to the defense minister’s request to reinforce the police and not use troops
for carrying out police functions, the civil authorities replied: “that requires so much time
and funds that it is not worth even thinking about it!” (Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni), 1:
475. The troops were required to conduct “patrols not only to guard banks, state treasury
offices, and prisons, but also postal-telegraph offices and even liquor stores!” (ibid., 2:
81).
32 Zaionchkovskii, “Vysshee voennoe upravlenie. Imperator i tsarstvuiushchii dom,” in
P. A. Zaionchkovskii, 79. See also Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 64.
33 Gumb, “Ugrozhat i nakazyvat’,” 181.
The period from 1907 to 1914 was one of active reforms, domestic
restructuring, and the reform of the Russian army.34 Serious investments
were needed to reinforce the army’s war readiness and strength. The
Finance Ministry was in no hurry to respond to the army’s request for
additional funds. The army leadership was forced to contact the newly
formed Duma in order to obtain support for its needs.35
The defeat in the Russo-Japanese war also revealed the need for
upgrading and purging the ranks of the high army command.36 The
highest command posts before World War I were frequently filled by
generals of doubtful military talents, excelling in energetic suppression of
revolution (N. I. Ivanov, P. K. Rennenkampf, and others).37 Even after
the first Russian revolution and constitutional reforms, Nikolai II consid-
ered the army his fiefdom and Russian officers as his personal vassals.38
The interference of the imperial family and court in army life was intense
and varied.39
Around August 1914, the Russian army, more than ever before, was
indeed occupied with carrying out its professional duty—defending the
country from external enemies. The army considered itself “outside of
politics”; it was freed from the control of the Interior Ministry; financing
of the army was increased due to the sympathetic position of the Third
and Fourth Dumas, and officer professionalism improved.
34 Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914
(Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), 200–237.
35 John W. Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the
Empire, 1898–1914 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2010), 250.
36 David R. Stone, The Russian Army, 41.
37 Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 70–71.
38 Cf. the tsar’s statement ending the discussion about the new military doctrine in
1912: “Military doctrine consists of doing everything that I order” (Menning, Bayonets
Before Bullets ), 216.
39 Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men, 27–31. The tsar considered it a terrible sin to maintain
contacts and cooperation with the Duma. Such “crimes,” apparently were the reason for
the resignation of defense minister Rediger in 1909 (Rediger, Istoriia moei zhizni), 2:
277–280.
22 S. GOLDIN
The Russian Army and the Jews

Before World War I
There were two important aspects to the relationship between the Russian
army and the Jews before 1914: (1) The relationship to Jews in the
army ranks; (2) The relationship between the army and the Jews in the
Pale of Settlement.40 Unlike several other non-ethnic Russian peoples
in the Empire, Jews were conscripted into the army.41 The percentage
of Jewish soldiers in the army exceeded the percentage of Jews in the
country’s population. There were 53,000 Jews in army service in 1897,
which represented about 5% of the soldiers (the percentage of Jews in the
population was 4%).42 The explanation given for this was that as Jewish
families generally have several children, they rarely received the exemption
accorded to families with only one son.43 At the same time, the annual
government statistics showed that according to the lists of those subject
to the draft, a significant number of Jews did not show up.44 Much has
40 The Pale of Jewish Settlement was the area of the Russian Empire (15 western
gubernias and 10 gubernias of the Kingdom of Poland) in which the Jewish population
could reside without special permission and (almost) without restrictions. See http://
www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pale_of_Settlement.
41 Derek J. Penslar, Jews and the Military (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2013), 28–29; Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Evrei v russkoi armii, 1827–1914
(Moscow: NLO, 2003), 31–34, 37–43. Jews were not conscripted, however, into the
navy. Rossiia 1913: Statistiko-dokumental’nyi spravochnik, ed. A. M. Anfimov and A. P.
Korelin (St. Ptbg: Blits, 1995), 278.
42 M. L. Usov, Predanie i fakty (k evreiskomy voprosu) (St. Ptbg: Razum, 1908), 54.
Military authorities attributed the relatively high percentage of Jews in the army to the
larger percentage of draft age males among the Jewish population than among the popu-
lation of Russia as a whole (1.84 versus 1.66%). CAHJP, HM2/8279.6; original: RGVIA,
f. 400, op. 19, d. 37. See also “Voinskaia povinnost’ v Rossii,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia
(St. Ptbg.: Brockhaus Efron, 1910), 5: 703–710; Petrovsky-Shtern, Evrei v russkoi armii,
195–196. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1911), where Jews represented about 4.5%
of the population, Jewish soldiers constituted 3% (Deák, Beyond Nationalism), 174.
43 G. B. Sliozberg, Dorevoliutsionnyi stroi Rossii (Paris, 1933), 274; Usov, Predanie i
fakty, 55. See also Penslar, Jews and the Military, 30.
44 Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation. Military Conscriptions, Total War and
Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 117.
According to the 1885 data of the Main Headquarters, 38.8% of Jews evaded conscription;
in 1886—13.4%, and in 1890—8.6%. The Main Headquarters attributed this reduction
to the imposition of a fine (300 rubles) in 1886 on the family of a recruit who did
not show up. Subsequently, the percent of draft-evading Jews again began to increase (in
1909, it was 27.9%); the Main Headquarters appraised that the Jews had learned how to
been said about the Jews’ efforts to evade army service. Jewish publi-
cists considered that the answer lies in the inadequate statistics about the
Pale of Settlement (the conscription lists included many people who had
either died or emigrated from Russia).45 According to the testimony of
a contemporary, to avoid conscription, Jews sometimes mutilated them-
selves, resorting to the aid of underground “doctors”; they cut off their
own toes, pierced their eardrums, and so forth.46
Jews were not candidates for officers in the Russian army. Jewish
soldiers were excluded altogether from military academies, while Jewish
“volunteers” (i.e., those who had finished high school; they were limited
to no more than 3% of a unit) were not permitted to take officers’ qual-
ifying exams.47 At first, these restrictions were religious in nature. At
avoid the fine. In 1898–1905, 38,254,500 rubles in fines were imposed on Jews, of which
only 1,077,000 were paid. CAHJP, HM/2 8279.6; original: RGVIA, f. 400, op. 19, d.
37. Cf. with the Interior Ministry data to which A. Antonovich alludes. According to
his calculations, from 1904 to 1908, from 37 to 40% (!) of all Jewish draftees evaded
service (An. Antonovich, “Russkii narod i glavneishie narodnosti Rossii pered voinskoi
povinnost’iu,” Voennyi sbornik 11 (1909): 248, 252–253. See also discussion on this in
Eugen M. Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia
(Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2010), 62–64.
45 Usov, Predanie i fakty, 54–55; L. S. Cherniavskii, Evrei i voinskaia povinnost’ (zakon
i praktika) (Alexandria, 1913), 1–10. Eugen M. Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State,
65–67. This explanation did not convince the antisemites. In their opinion, the Jews
themselves were responsible for the problems with statistics, deliberately obfuscating them
or incapable of organizing them; they thought that the emigration of Jewish youth of
draft age was nothing other than evading their military obligation. Dalinskii, “Evrei v
armii,” Voennyi sbornik 10 (1911): 77–78.
46 A. I. Denikin, Put’ russkogo ofitsera (New York: Izdatelstvo imeni Chekhova, 1953),
284. For several years, Denikin was a member of the gubernia military office. See also
Penslar, Jews and the Military, 31.
47 “Vysochaishe utverzhdennoe 21 maia 1888 goda raspisanie dopustimogo chisla
inovertsev v ofitserskom sostave.” CAHJP, HM2/7912.3; original: RGVIA, f. 1859, op. 2,
d. 281. The number of Jewish doctors was limited to 2%. See also Sliozberg, Dorevoli-
utsionnyi stroi Rossii, 273; D. Raskin, “Evrei v sostave rossiiskogo ofitserskogo korpusa v
XIX – nachale XX veka,” in Evrei v Rossii; istoriia i kul’tura: sbornik nauchnykh trudov, ed.
D. A. Elyashevich (St. Ptbg.: Peterburgskii Evreiskii Universitet, 1998), 170–174. From
1828, when the Jews were subject to conscription, the general rules for length of service
did not apply to them. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, three Jews were listed
as reserve officers in the Russian army (Raskin, “Evrei v sostave”), 170–172.
24 S. GOLDIN
the turn of the twentieth century, Jews who had converted to Russian
Orthodoxy were allowed to enter military academies.48
The situation changed under Nikolai II, when the definition of
“Jewry” for the military changed from a religious into a racial concept.49
According to the tsar’s decree from 11 May 1910, Jews [belong to] the
lower ranks, “no matter what their faith,” and were no longer allowed to
take officers’ exams.50 In presenting lower ranking persons for the rank
of army ensign (praporshchik), commanders were obligated “carefully to
clarify the nationality of these lower-ranking officers”; the commanders
were prohibited from proposing not only Jews who had adopted Chris-
tianity but also sons, and even grandchildren (on the male and female
lines) of those who “had been born in the Judaic faith.”51 Back in 1903,
the Military Council under the War Ministry adopted a resolution stating
that “young people of the Judaic faith who have adopted Christianity are
an extremely undesirable element in our army….”52
The gradual change in early twentieth-century Russia from a religious
to a racial definition of a “Jew” and the corresponding expanded discrimi-
nation against the Jews has not received sufficient attention, although this
48 Thus, according to the decree of the defense minister of 20 December 1891, Jewish
volunteers who had adopted Russian Orthodoxy before joining the army were permitted to
take the officers’ exam if they had passed an exam on religious law. CAHJP, HM2/7912.3;
original: RGVIA, f. 1859, op. 2, d. 287. Cf. in Denikin’s memoirs: “An officer’s rank was
totally inaccessible to people of the Jewish faith. The officers’ corps included, however,
officers and generals who had converted to Christianity before their service and then
attended military schools” (Denikin, Put’ russkogo ofitsera), 283. One such general was
M. V. Grulev, who left interesting memoirs.
49 Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 69. See also Semion Goldin, “The ‘Jewish
Question’ in the Tsarist Army in the Early Twentieth Century,” in The Revolution of 1905
and Russia’s Jews, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 70.
50 CAHJP, HM2/7912.3; original: RGVIA, f. 1859, op. 2, d. 287. On 10 September
1910, the war minister prohibited accepting volunteer—Jews for service in garrison
fortresses; on 12 May 1912, the Main Headquarters ordered applying all restrictions
imposed earlier on “Talmudist Jews” to all Jews “independent of their faith” (ibid.).
51 Order of the commander of the troops of the Warsaw military district from 13
January 1914 (ibid.).
52 Ibid.
development is extremely important for an understanding of the evolution

of the ideology of later tsarism.53
The memoirs of contemporaries present a variety of views on the atti-
tude of commanders and comrades toward Jews who served in the ranks
of the Russian army. According to M. V. Grulev, “the atmosphere of
enmity and hatred harass” Jewish solders … “everywhere” in the army.54
A. Denikin remarked, in speaking about the attitude toward Jewish
recruits:
In some units, there was a tendency to harass Jews, but not as a result
of the military system, rather something from popular behavior, brought
into the barrack from outside…. The majority of Jews are city dwellers,
most of them poor, and therefore the recruits were puny, underdevel-
oped physically, which already placed them in an inferior position in the
barracks. The Jews’ limited elementary education in the “heder” and their
frequent ignorance of the Russian language and general backwardness
further complicated their position…. Some widespread Jewish character
traits such as hysteria and love of speculation also played a certain role.55
The Russian officer corps—itself heterogeneous in composition—did not

elaborate a unified approach to the Jews: “We find among the officers
53 See Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 33–39. Rogger brings
an example of this “racial” approach from as early as the 1860s–1880s, when converted
Jews were not allowed to serve as gendarmes in the border regions or to be censors of
publications in Jewish languages. In the elections for the Fourth Duma (1912), the racial
approach was confirmed in the instructions of the Interior Ministry to register converted
Jews in the curiae [grouping of voters] of Jewish voters (ibid.), 35, 36. See also Marina
Mogilner, Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia (Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 217–250.
54 M. L. Grulev, Zapiski generala-evreia (Orange, CA: Antiquary, 1987), 240.
55 Denikin, Put’ russkogo ofitsera, 283–284. Cf. the memoirs of an army attorney who
denied “the defamation about the Russian soldier’s nasty and cruel attitude toward the
Jews”: “It’s true, a soldier will laugh at ‘a little Yid,’ if he is very avaricious and is always
a coward, but, in general, the attitude toward him is entirely benign” (M. Korol’kov,
Grimasy zhizni), 58. The anonymous author of a collection Voina i evrei held a similar
opinion. “Honestly, I must say that the mass of soldiers not only did not deride the Jews
… they did not manifest any striving to alienate ‘Jews’ as such….” Voina i evrei (St. Ptbg:
tip. M. Stasulevicha, 1912), 54.
26 S. GOLDIN
the whole range of possible attitudes toward the Jews, from extreme
Judeophobia to Judeophilia.”56
For example, Mikhail Makeev, commander of the 59th Lublin regi-
ment (quartered in Odessa) showed extreme loyalty toward Jewish
soldiers and the Jewish religion. In June 1889, he allowed the Jewish
soldiers in his regiment “to bring to synagogue a Jewish liturgical book
called a Torah,” purchased with their own money, and he dispatched them
in a column to the synagogue.57 Makeev himself also arrived at the syna-
gogue with the officers of the regiment and carried the Torah “around
the reading stand.”58 Similar cases were recorded at this time in at least
six regiments, and all the permissive commanders were punished.59
At the same time, the very thought of a Jewish orderly was an insult to
antisemitic officers: “Not one officer in the Russian army would himself
take a Jewish orderly … by virtue of his extreme underhandedness and
slovenliness, and fearing chicanery, gossip, and even espionage.”60
Another aspect of the relations between the army and the Jews was the
army’s attitude toward the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement. As
mentioned previously, one of the army’s important functions was partic-
ipation in maintaining order in the country. The army helped also in
suppressing anti-Jewish disorders, which occurred often in tsarist Russia.
In 1882, the army participate actively in suppressing pogroms in southern
and southwestern Russia.61 In 1902, the troops were summoned to
put down anti-Jewish disturbances in the city of Cz˛estochowa. The
56 Voina i evrei, 55–56.

57 CAHJP, HM2/8279.5; original: RGVIA, f. 400, op. 15, d. 1092. There were 327
Jewish soldiers in this regiment.
58 Ibid. Despite his excellent leadership qualities and the recommendation of the district
commander to limit Makeev’s punishment to a reprimand for his “tactlessness,” by a
supreme order of 16 July 1888, Makeev was retired (ibid.). On Makeev’s case, see also
N. Portnova, ed., Byt’ evreem v Rossii. Materialy po istorii russkogo evreistva, 1880–1890
gody (Jerusalem, 1999), 21–23.
59 Petrovsky-Shtern, Evrei v russkoi armii, 63–65, 325–330. “…The War Ministry
considered philosemitic attitudes among officers as contrary to the spirit and letter of
army practices” (ibid.), 331.
60 Dalinskii, Evrei v armii (St. Ptbg, 1912), 12. Cf. the circular of Lt. General Priaslov,
forbidding the appointment of Jewish soldiers as orderlies, messengers, and couriers (Voina
i evrei), 57.
61 I. Michael Aronson, Troubled Waters: Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in
Russia (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 125–144.
soldiers opened fire, killing two people and wounding eight; the crowd
dispersed.62 During the Kishinev pogrom (1903), General Bekman,
commander of the garrison, demanded that the governor authorize the
army to restore order. The military authorities arrested about 500 people
in the course of the pogrom.63
In October 1905, soldiers frequently took part in pogroms against
Jews; in Ekaterinoslav, troops left the barracks to “beat the Yids.”64
In 1905–1906, officers often explained to the soldiers that the revolu-
tion was caused by the intrigues of the Jewish press, and they urged
annihilating the Jews and other “internal enemies.”65
Prewar publicistic literature sympathetic to the Jews discussed the role
and significance of the Jewish population in the Pale in the coming war
(in particular, the need to utilize these Jews for intelligence gathering).66
Russian Jews, it suggested, ought to play a strategic role in the war
economy as they occupied prominent positions in the leather and textile
industries and in trade, and they played a leading role in the grain trade.
Finally, the Jews’ role in financing the war through the banks that they
controlled was evident. In this context, it was noted that one could not
insult a Jew with impunity because the “national” sensitivity of Jewish
bankers, traders, and industrialists could outweigh the interests of an
“advantageous financial deal.”67
Such reasoning, however, never bothered the Russian military leaders.
Whereas the attitude of ordinary Russian soldiers and the officers’ corps
toward Jews was ambivalent, among the highest military leadership,
dislike of Jews was a sign of an officially approved direction of thought.
The results of the high army command’s discussion of a draft plan to
abolish conscription of Jews offer convincing proof of this.

63 Edward H. Judge, Easter in Kishinev: Anatomy of a Pogrom (New York: New York
64 J. Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression, 80.
65 Gerald D. Surh, “Duty and Ambivalence: The Russian Army and Pogroms, 1903–
1906,” in Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918, ed.
Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,
2014), 215–235.
66 Voina i evrei, 281–282.
67 Ibid., 283.
28 S. GOLDIN
Draft Plans to Abolish Army Conscription of Jews

The idea of replacing compulsory conscription for Jews with a special
monetary tax was first mentioned in 1903 during the war minister and
finance minister’s discussion of the military budget for 1904.68 In a poll
conducted in 1904, district commanders unanimously (with the excep-
tion of General Sukhotin, commander of the Siberian military district)
opposed this substitution as unfair toward the other peoples of the empire
(primarily the Russian people). The generals voiced the opinion that
introducing an additional tax would lead to the Jews’ “even greater
exploitation” of the non-Jewish population and, ultimately, would evoke
an increase in antisemitism.69
The proposal to replace conscription with a tax for the Jews arose
again in 1907, but this time the initiative, in fact, came from the tsar.
Nikolai II approvingly endorsed the annual reports of the commander
of the Vilna (Vilnius) military district and of the Kherson governor for
1907 demanding an end to conscripting Jews into the army.70 The ques-
tion was sent to the purview of the State Defense Council, the highest
organ responsible for elaborating defense policy, headed by Grand Prince
Nikolai Nikolaevich (the future commander-in-chief).
The State Defense Council determined in its decision that “the pres-
ence of Jews in the army … is an extreme disaster, extremely harmful for
army interests….”71 At the same time, it did not consider it possible to
replace the Jews’ compulsory service with a monetary tax as this measure
was not fair to other peoples in the empire and “immoral, as it established
the right of the rich to buy their way out” of service. It was indicated
that the Jews would be paying the new tax at the expense of Christians,
raising the prices of the goods they sold.72
68 Goldin, “The ‘Jewish Question’,” 271–274. See also CAHJP, HM2/8279.6; orig-
inal: RGVIA, f. 400, op. 19, d. 37. Perhaps insufficient funds for military expenses drove
both ministers to such a plan. In any case, precisely in 1903, the War Ministry examined
the question of not permitting even converted Jews to attend military academies.
69 CAHJP, HM2/879.6; original in RGVIA, f. 400, op. 19, d. 37.
70 The commander of the Vilna military district, in particular, reported to the tsar: “The
Jews are an age-old evil in our army; their harmful qualities are now in full bloom….
Troop commanders … advocate a complete halt to accepting Jews into the army.” The
tsar seconded the motion (ibid.).
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
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difficulties, and wish to try a new place. We have met many upon the road,
who have nearly equalled the old woman on the prairie, who had begun the
world seven times.
The other female passenger was a young girl who had come down the
river in the boat, her home being on the prairie, back of Peru. She was a
pretty innocent country lassie about sixteen, travelling alone, on a visit to a
brother living on the river, whose wife was ill and required her services. Her
travelling dress was a muslin striped with pink; and her hat one of that
description we call Dutch bonnets, made of pasteboard covered with pink
glazed gingham. She was rejoiced to examine my wardrobe, and cut new
patterns, as she lives far from the haunts of men and mantua-makers. My
Mosaic brooch pleased her much, and she asked me if I had bought it of the
pedlar who she heard had lately arrived in that part of the country with a lot
of new goods, and whom she was eager to see. I was obliged to say I had
not purchased it from that fashionable depositary. She then proposed to
show me her clothes; mine being new to her, she supposed her’s must be
new and desirable to me. At her request the chamber-maid drew from the
state-room a huge chest of black walnut, which she opened, and, among
other things, displayed a pretty straw bonnet trimmed with gay ribbons and
flowers. That was her Sunday bonnet. She also drew forth a topaz pin which
had reached here in a pedlar’s cart, and was a present to her by her brother.
‘This pin has lasted wonderfully,’ she said, ‘considering how much it has
been borrowed. At every dance or party when I do not go, some of the girls
borrow and wear it. It has been lent for ten miles around.’ This young lady
had been brought when quite young, by her family, from Ohio, whence they
emigrated here. They had all suffered much from the fever and ague, but
were now acclimated, or rather had corrected the causes of their agues, and
she had become fat and rosy. I have remarked in several instances, that the
children born here, or brought here young, grow up strong and ruddy, and
their parents suffer the most. It is only the first generation who lose their
health, as the land improves and diseases vanish about their homes by the
time their children are grown. This family live upon a large and productive
farm which yields, among other things, according to her account, four
hundred bushels of peaches. In the season of this delicious fruit her mother
gives a peach feast, inviting all their friends and acquaintances, who, after
eating as much as they like, carry away each a basket full. Her family sell
several barrels of dried peaches every year.
Twelve miles below Peoria we stopped at the town of Pekin, built upon a
bank elevated fifteen feet above the water during high tide; but now, all
these places are much higher. The captain told us he should be here some
time taking in merchandize, and we employed the interval in seeing the
lions of the town. I told the little country girl our intention. ‘Lions!’ she
said, ‘I guess you mean wolves; there are no lions in these parts.’
Pekin is a small place and only contains eight or nine hundred
inhabitants, and five or six streets. The shops seemed well filled with goods,
and presented a goodly show of tin, iron-ware, dry-goods, crockery,
provisions, etc. I purchased a green gauze veil here and several small
articles, all of which I found much more expensive than in our Atlantic
shops, freight being high on the Mississippi. In paying for them I found a
new currency here, my shillings and sixpences being transformed into bits
and pics or picayunes. The Pekin Express lay upon the counter which we
amused ourselves looking over while waiting for change. The person who
kept the shop turned out to be the oldest inhabitant of the place, that
important personage who, in a storm, always determines if there has been
ever a greater one or no. He might very well be the oldest, as the town is but
ten years in existence. ‘Pekin,’ he said, ‘would have been ere this far ahead
of any town upon the river, were it not that there were two parties among
the commissioners who were to lay it out; these pulling different ways the
town was nearly lost between them. The rich country behind, and the river
in front, had befriended them, and they soon expected to have their branch
of the railroad finished to Mackinaw river, whose water power and timber
bluffs were very valuable.’ We remarked as we walked, a large hotel nearly
finished; a presbyterian, methodist, and several other meeting-houses; office
of the ‘Tazewell Telegraph’; academy, and some dwellings. We lay here
four hours with a hot sun reflecting from the sandy bank, impatiently
watching the barrels of flour which seemed as they would never cease
rolling from the large store-house upon the bank, down to our vessel. These
barrels are from the steam flour mills, which turn out two hundred barrels a
day. Beside these, we took in a hundred sacks of corn, and some other
merchandize. The captain seemed well pleased with his morning’s work,
saying he had a streak of luck that day. Three miles below this he had
another ‘streak.’ At the mouth of Mackinaw river scows were waiting him,
loaded with bundles of laths and staves, and long dark boards, which I took
for mahogany, but which proved to be black-walnut. The Mackinaw is a
clear stream, having rich bottom land, bounded by bluffs covered with
white oak and cedar. The prairies through which it flows, are rolling and
tolerable land with several mill seats.
The Illinois looked beautiful this afternoon. Its glassy waters scarcely
moved, and it seemed so content with its sweet resting place, and at the
silent admiration of those stately trees, which were sending their cool
flickering shadows over her and gazing down at loveliness, that it would
fain linger upon its course, as some young languid beauty, conscious of a
graceful position which is winning admiring glances from every beholder.
Among the trees, beside the usual elm, oak and maple, we observed
several enormous wild cherry trees, nearly one hundred feet in height, and
at least fifteen feet in circumference, and the paw paw, the coffee nut, the
red ash, American nettle, a tall, slender tree, with pretty red berries, and
many unknown to us, or to those around us. The islands in this river are
small but covered with soft, luxurious herbage. The birds and wild fowl
were out, enjoying themselves, chattering, pluming their wings, and visiting
each other from tree to tree. Among the wild fowl, we observed teal and
brant, and wild ducks, skimming over the water, or wheeling in flocks over
our heads. One, apparently in a spirit of daring, would set out to cross our
path—leaving his little cove, he would glide with the utmost rapidity over
the river in front of us, leaving a silver line on the smooth surface of the
stream, and after we had passed, glide back, bobbing up and down upon the
waves in our wake. When he arrived at home, what a quacking and
chattering and fluttering was heard! In one little cove, or bayou, was a little
island, covered with rich grass, and shaded from the sun by the dense grove
whose branches met over it—this seemed to be quite a colony of ducks,
who were going and coming in rapid but graceful evolutions from the main
land. A young man who stood near us named the place Quackville, and
declared when he returned home he would publish a map, and sell off the
lots. We passed several towns to day, as Liverpool, Havanna, Beardstown—
the former a small settlement, but which its inhabitants intend to make
larger, as they have already a railroad in contemplation across the
Mississippi. Beardstown is a place of some importance. It is a county town,
and its commerce greater than any upon the river. Mechanics of all
descriptions are to be found here, as bakers, shoe makers, tailors,
blacksmiths, cabinet makers, silver smiths, carpenters, joiners, coopers,
painters &c. &c. see Peck. There are also here steam flour mills, saw mills,
breweries, distilleries, &c. A canal is projected here, to connect the Illinois
with the Wabash, (which divides the state of Illinois from Indiana,) by
means of the Sangamon and Vermillion forks. While passing these towns
one is surprised at their rapid growth, for when Schoolcraft rowed his canoe
up this river twenty years since, it was a wilderness only inhabited by
Indians. Opposite Havanna, the Spoon river enters the Illinois. Its Indian
name is Amequeon, which means ladle, and is much prettier than its present
name. It is one hundred and forty miles in length, navigable most of the
way, and capable of being cleared further. The soil is dry undulating prairie,
with considerable timber—and some of it upon the forks of the Spoon is the
richest in the state—its forks and tributaries affording good mill seats. It is
in the military bounty land, which commences just above it, and terminates
at the junction of the Illinois with the Mississippi, making a triangle of five
million three hundred and sixty thousand acres, about ninety miles along
the Illinois, and the base of the triangle, ninety miles across to the
Mississippi, near Quincy. This is appropriated by Congress to the soldiers
of the regular army in the war between the United States and Great Britain.
Two thirds of this land is prairie, and the rest timbered, crossed by a variety
of rivers and creeks. The soil is generally a black vegetable mould from
fifteen to thirty inches deep. Much of the best of this land has been bought
up by a company who have opened an office at Quincy, where they sell it
from three to ten dollars an acre, while other parts are sold at the price
government established for its lands all over the States, one dollar and
twenty-five cents an acre. Government has given to the State of Illinois
every other section. Sangamon river comes gliding down over its pebbly
floor, a pure transparent stream, between Liverpool and Havanna. It runs
through Sangamon county, of whose fertility, beautiful scenery, crowded
population, rich prairies, numerous streams, and valuable timber groves, we
have heard such flourishing accounts. By the way, I can never get
reconciled to the western custom of calling woods timber, woodland, or
groves, or forest, timberland. My young country girl, Maria, in relating an
interesting romantic event which had occurred in her region of country,
instead of speaking of a ramble in the woods said ‘we had gone to walk in
the timber.’ In this famed county is Springfield, the capital of the State. The
Sangamon river is one hundred and eighty miles long, and navigable nearly
to the capitol, seventy-five miles, by small steamboats. With a small
expense it can be cleared. We do not see the Illinois in all its grandeur, as
the water is low. It falls, our captain says, one and a half inches a day, and
has fallen eight feet since June. It will arise in the autumn, and when its
present channel is full overflows the bottom land to the bluffs. This makes
the river shore, unless very elevated, rather unhealthy, and consequently
uninhabited. Soon after passing the Sangamon, we stopped to take in wood,
and we embraced the opportunity to take a sunset stroll in the forest. A
small cottage embowered among woodpiles, inhabited by a woodman and
his family, were the only signs of human life we saw. These sylvan
solitudes however, are not without their denizens, for the birds were
skipping from bough to bough, the turtle were romantically reclining upon
the logs beside the water, the wild fowls, and the paroquets were chattering
in concert with the mocking bird. There the squirrel also
“Sits partly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,

And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking.”
Here however in these pretty nooks he sits undisturbed, for no boys

‘with crooks and bags’ can molest his quiet haunts. We enjoyed the deep
forest walk very much having been now so long cramped in a steamboat,
and wandered along among the stately beech and graceful linden, the black
walnut and locust, swung upon the festoons of the enormous vines which
hung down from the trees, and breathed with much satisfaction the perfume
from the dewy herbage, grape vine buds, and yellow jassamin which
climbed the boughs around us. The steamboat bell recalled us to the shore
in time to see a steamboat pass, being the second we had met this morning.
There is much travelling upon this river during the summer months. Our
captain told us he had made fifty-eight trips last year from St. Louis to Peru,
carrying ten thousand passengers. This seems a great number, but we are a
travelling people, and with the emigrants going west, it may be true. I am
chary of repeating things heard upon the road as I know my country people
delight in quizzing travellers. I have had some awful examples of this lately,
sufficient to make me cautious, in regard to certain tourists from abroad to
this country; and when told any thing dubious, remember the three miles of
roast pig; the drunken ladies of Boston; the piano with pantalets upon its
legs; the canvass bags to hold specie in times of bank troubles, etc. etc.
Pretty Maria’s travelling bonnet, which I described to you, also reminds me
of the misconceptions to which travellers are liable, who take a hasty glance
and go not to the best sources for information. As proof of the poverty of
the country, low style of dress and manners, an European traveller tells his
readers the richest ladies wear hats of their own manufacture, made of
pasteboard covered with calico or gingham. And so they do; but only to run
in the garden, or to a neighbor in the county, for you know we all, when in
the county, use these as garden hats, as they shelter the face so well from
the sun. I wish you could transport yourself here at this moment, and seat
yourself by me upon the hurricane deck, and see how perfectly the forest
shore is reflected upon the quiet polished Illinois. This stream cannot be
called a flowing one for it has scarcely any current, but reposes in its bed
with the tranquility of a lake. Now it lies in evening’s deep shadow, while,
as we look above, the topmost plumage is tipt with gold—this gradually
disappears,—darkness succeeds, except where one struggling moon-beam,
from the Indians Tibic geezis, night sun, streams down the long forest vista,
and lies like a silver ribbon across the river. I always go to bed with the
chickens while on board a steamboat, as a light attracts mosquetoes, and
here river fog forbids us to sit out of doors—so good night.
July 10.—Off Meredosia. This is a thriving town, built upon one of those
elevated terraces which occur frequently along the river as if on purpose to
raise the settlements above the damp alluvion, and to give them a pretty
effect. It is in a good situation to rise, as it is a sort of business port to
Jacksonville, to which a railroad of twenty-three miles is in operation; and
Morgan county, upon which it is situated, is a thickly peopled district,
having good timbered lands, mill streams, quarries of lime and free stone;
and is watered by many streams. Jacksonville is a large town where there
are several churches, a court house, mills and shops. The Quincy and
Danville railroad passes through Meredosia, to the Wabash river, two
hundred and twenty miles. Through this river, communication is held with
the lakes. Their exports are between two and three hundred thousand
dollars, and imports five hundred thousand dollars. Here we took in several
passengers. Six miles below Meredosia is Naples, a small collection of
shops and dwellings, situated upon a high bank. Upon one house, larger
than the rest, I read the name ‘Napoleon Coffee House.’ I looked around for
Vesuvious, but saw it not, nor any other Neopolitan traces. The names upon
this river are very ludicrous, and striking monuments of the want of taste in
those who bestowed them. One would imagine, from reading my last letter,
I had been travelling in seven league boats, or in a balloon, as I have
touched at Peru, Pekin, Havanna, Liverpool, Naples, Brussels, Rome, (part
in the night,) &c. While the Indian names are so pretty, why are they
neglected for such worn out European designations. Peoria, and Illinois, and
Ottowa are very pretty; Hennipen is very well, as given in honor of one of
the early discoverers of this county from France, and it might be thought a
debt of gratitude, but every pioneer has not so good a name, and if this
custom is followed, it saddles us with such names as already abound, viz: Jo
Davies’ County, Pike, Cook, Higgonbottom, Hancock, Buggsville,
Toddtown, Dodgeville. Moreover, the Indians were the first explorers, and
if any, they are entitled to this honor. To obviate this it has been proposed to
take something local, but unless persons of taste are consulted, we shall
hear of more Bigbonelicks, Bloodyruns, Mud Lakes or Crab Orchard’s. I
wish Congress would take the matter in hand, and form a committee of
nomanclature to name every new settlement.
We are constantly passing steamboats. In 1836, at Beardstown, there
were four hundred and fifty arrivals and departures, and at Naples their
account was the first year, 1828, nine; from March to June, 1832, one
hundred and eight, and now, of course all these figures must be doubled.
Among our passengers we have an old Kentucky woman, who has been
living several years upon this river. She was so rejoiced to see a slave again,
that soon she and Violette, our chambermaid, became quite intimate friends.
She frequently borrowed her pipe to have a comfortable smoke out upon the
guards, where, with Violette beside her, she would smoke and chat for
hours. A lady on board, who had lately become a convert to temperance
cause, was extremely offended at the sight of spirits upon the dining table.
Her husband argued for their use upon the ground of frequent impure water,
and fever and ague, from which the stomach is fortified. The wife, however,
was not convinced; when, in the midst of a high argument, our old woman
put her head in at the door, and taking out her pipe, after slowly puffing off
her smoke, uttered this oracular sentence: ‘For my part, I think there are lots
of gnats strained at, and lots of camels swallowed,’—and disappeared. The
husband left the argument for the card table, whence he arose sometime
after, grumbling at his losses, and galled by the discovery that the winner
was a well known black legg, whose practice was to live in steamboats
during summer, to fleece such silly sheep as himself. In the winter he
returned upon his laurels, to New Orleans or St. Louis, to revel upon his
winnings.
This morning we passed one of those machines employed by
government, during low water for the purpose of clearing away the
sandbars. It is a large wooden ark, worked by steam. A great shovel takes
up the mud, brings it up, and throws it into the scow at the other side which
is emptied upon the shores. The State has appropriated $100,000 to
improvements upon this river. There are several sandbars, and below
Ottowa ledges of sandstone which, if removed, would render the navigation
unimpeded at all seasons of the year quite to Ottowa, two hundred and ten
miles above the mouth of the river. We stopped so often to take in freight
and passengers, that we began to be fearful we should not reach the mouth
of the river and behold its junction with the stately Mississippi before dark
—however, ‘we came a good jog’ this morning, to use our old Kentucky
lady’s phrase, and now after tea we are sitting upon the guards watching for
it. We are continually passing streams which run into this river—Crooked
creek, comes down about one hundred miles through a very fertile region of
country with a soil of argillaceous mould from one to four feet deep.[20] Its
banks are lined with oak, maple, hickory, black walnut and much other
valuable timber. Bituminous coal, and free stone quarries are also found
there. Apple creek, at whose mouth is a small settlement; Macoupin creek,
its name taken from the Indian Maquapin, a water plant, whose smooth leaf
floats upon the bayous and lakes in this region; its esculent root, after being
baked under heated stones is a favorite food with the native tribes. There is
a settlement upon this last named stream commenced in eighteen hundred
and sixteen, which then was the most northern white settlement of Illinois.
The population of the State four years after, in eighteen hundred and twenty,
was fifty-five thousand two hundred and eleven, and now, eighteen hundred
and forty, it is four hundred and twenty three thousand nine hundred and
thirty four, a great increase in twenty years. We have now upon each hand,
the two last counties which border the Illinois. Green, on the east, contains
excellent land, well settled by eastern families, many from Vermont. It is
one of the richest portions of land in the State, traversed by fine water
courses and bounded by two large rivers,—containing beautiful prairies,
and excellent timber. In the cliffs which border the Mississippi on this
county, bituminous coal is found among the sandstone and limestone strata,
and crystal springs flow from their sides. Calhoun county on our right is the
southern point of the triangle containing the military bounty lands. The
point where the Mississippi and Illinois meet is low prairie subjected to
inundation and consequently unhealthy; coal has been found here, and the
large trees are famous for their honey. As we were near the mouth of the
river, and my little fellow voyager, Maria, had not yet landed, I asked her
how far we were from her brother’s residence. She said she had been
looking out for it, but every place had a different name from that of her
brother. I recommended her to ask the captain; he sent her word we had
passed it twenty miles back. Poor Maria seemed overwhelmed with
consternation. The town, we found upon enquiry, was in the interior, the
passengers landing at an old tree upon the shore and we all now
remembered a plain country-man, upon the bank who made numerous signs
to the steamboat, flourishing his arms frantically. Maria with the rest
supposed he was in jest, or a madman, but now remembered he was like her
brother, who must have seen her and motioned her to stop. Maria had
expected a town, and did not imagine that her stopping place. As our boat
was so uncertain in its movements the poor man must have spent the day
upon the shore, and was now doubtless very anxious about his young sister.
There was nothing for her to do now but stop in the steamboat at St. Louis
until its return trip. I felt sorry for the poor girl, only fifteen, and thus left to
the tender mercy of the world. We spoke to the captain and chambermaid,
who both promised to take charge of her and land her at her brothers when
he returned next week. The afternoon is beautiful; we are peeping up the
forest glades, as the channel runs near the shore, or inhaling the rich
perfume which the summer breeze shakes out from the trees. Suddenly the
forest is passed and we gaze over the low prairie which lies between the
two rivers, bounded by a line of round green hills which range across the
country. ‘The bluffs of the Mississippi!’ exclaimed my companion, ‘and we
soon shall see its famous waters.’ We hastened up to the hurricane deck,
and placed ourselves in a good situation for beholding the scenery; a little
excited at the thought of looking upon the grand and celebrated stream. The
Illinois flowed as straight and still as a canal, about four hundred yards
wide, we glided over its waters and soon found ourselves in a broad
majestic stream which came rolling down between a range of bluffs; here, a
mile broad, upon whose bosom some lonely islands stretched across from
the mouth of the Illinois. The view was delightful upon each side; the fair
plains of Missouri at our right, and upon the Illinois side, bold beautiful
cliffs, or green cone like hills, covered with a soft carpet of verdure, sinking
down upon the east side into lovely green dells. This style of hill is called
by the French, Mamelle. In one of these pretty nooks, nestled at the foot of
a bluff, is the town of Grafton, from whose balconies the inhabitants obtain
a fine view up the Mississippi. This town is only a few years old, but
expects soon to rival Alton, as most of the travelling from the interior to the
Missouri towns opposite, is through it. It has already laid out upon paper a
railroad to Springfield, the capitol. The rapid tide of the ‘father of waters,’
presented a great contrast to the languid Illinois. The color is brown, but of
a different tint from the Illinois, being a dark coffee brown, but clear and
sparkling. We looked a last farewell to the fair Illinois, upon whose banks,
or on whose water we had travelled for four days and four nights, a distance
of nearly four hundred and fifty miles, if we include the Des Plaines. The
loveliness of the scenery all this distance merits the encomiums made upon
it by the early French writers. This was a favorite river with the French, and
La Salle, Charlevoix, and Marquette, describe the beauty of its shores in
glowing terms.
The bluffs upon the Illinois shore, as we descend the Mississippi,
become more bare and precipitous, and have a waterworn appearance as if
the water had once flowed along their summits. The regular stratification of
the sandstone and limestone of these cliffs, present the appearance of mason
work, crowning the heights with castellated resemblances, so that we might
imagine we were passing beneath some mountain fastness, with its
frowning walls, dungeon keep, and warder’s tower. Occasionally masses of
white limestone are strewed along the shore, or grouped upon the green
sloping bank, as if some large city had there arisen upon the river’s side.
Turning a sharp angle of one of those bluffs we found ourselves before a
large imposing looking town, built upon the bank of the river, which came
sloping down from the bluffs behind. This we learned was Alton. While our
crew were mooring our boat upon the steep bank, we gazed with great
curiosity and interest upon this place, larger than any we had seen since
leaving Detroit fourteen hundred miles behind. To the left the rocks were
crowned by a large solid looking building which we were told was the
penitentiary. In front was a row of high ware-houses made of limestone,
filled with goods and men; while a mass of houses and steeples at our right
were brightly reflecting the rays of the sinking sun. The shore presented a
busy scene; men and carts and horses were transporting goods or luggage,
or busily employed Macadamizing the bank—a great improvement upon
the wharves we had passed. A large brick building at our right hand, with a
white porch and steps, bearing the sign of ‘Alton House,’ being our place of
destination, we directed our course towards it. The keeper of the house
being absent, and it being no one’s business to take care of us, we spent
some time wandering about the well furnished parlors, and staring at the
waiters who were washing up the tea things in the dining-room, ere we
could find any one to listen to our wants. We had left behind us the land
where a living is only to be obtained by effort, and where the landlord and
porters are on the alert in order to catch the stranger and take him in. Here,
the cool American manner obtains; and although to the hungry, tired
traveller rather annoying, yet, when we reflect upon the peace, and
independence, and plenty, which produces this indifference, he will do as
we did, throw himself upon a sofa, keep cool, and quietly await the arrival
of somebody.
While amusing ourselves looking around at the furniture, we observed a
portrait of, as we afterwards learned, the master of the house. As much as
we had heard of the wild independence, the devil-me-care manners of our
western brethren, we were here taken by surprise. He was without his coat
—actually painted in his shirt sleeves—having upon his head an old straw
hat! It was probably a warm day, or he was in too much of a hurry to put on
his coat when he went to sit; and besides, it was nobody’s business but his
own how he was dressed, or if he were dressed at all, and I suppose we may
be thankful he retained his white robe ‘any way.’ Luxury, refinement, and
conventual forms may be carried to excess; but I am not prepared to say the
other extreme is better. A boarder in the house happening to stray in, we
told our wants, and he kindly sent a waiter for the master of the house. He
came instantly and with the greatest alacrity and wish to oblige, took us up
stairs. All the rooms proving full or engaged, except one too small, we were
directed to another house, which, after a short moonlight walk, we reached.
The Eagle tavern, a favorite name for hotels, I think, in our country, was a
comfortable house, although not pretending to the style and fashion of the
Alton House. And now having finished these last few lines, while our
supper was preparing, I hasten to bid you good-night.
LETTER VIII.
Alton, July 11th.
My dear E.—Harassed by no compunctious visitings for the enormous
package which I dismissed to you this morning through the Alton post-
office, I have seated myself deliberately before my little desk to prepare you
another. We have spent a delightful day among our friends here, and are
very much pleased with the towns of Alton, for there are two of them. We
are now, four o’clock, waiting for the steamboat to take us to St. Louis, and
I employ the time in making a few sketches of the place for you. Alton is
built as I told you, upon a sloping bank. This ground is very uneven, and
upon some of the elevated portions are the public buildings. The churches
here are well built and numerous, I think seven or eight; the streets wide
and airy; places reserved for public squares, and several handsome private
dwellings. The town has arisen rapidly, and from a small town in 1832, it
has now fine streets, and houses, two hundred being built last year;
merchants who transact business to the amount of several hundred thousand
dollars, and even half a million in some instances. Eight or ten steamboats
are owned here, and two railroads in contemplation, and the great national
road it is thought will be conducted through this place. There are several
religious societies here, each having houses of worship; among them the
baptist church is spoken of as being nicely fitted up in the interior; it is built
of stone. Every convenience and comfort of life is at hand; coal in profusion
in the vicinity of the town, which is sold very cheap; limestone, freestone,
and water lime, besides other mineral productions abound. The markets are
stored with wild game—deer, partridges, prairie hen, and water-fowl; fruits
both wild and cultivated; various sorts of fish; corn, beef, pork, and
vegetables of the finest order. Madison county, in which it stands, is one of
the richest in the State, being most of it upon the American bottom. It
contains seven hundred and ninety square miles, and the value of its
productions, exclusive of capital invested, and cost of buildings, amounts to
two millions three hundred and sixty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty-
one dollars and eighty cents. Of bushels of wheat, they have raised one
hundred and sixty-five thousand five hundred and twenty. Corn one million
three hundred and four thousand three hundred and thirty-five bushels.
Tobacco, eleven thousand two hundred and eighty pounds. Capital invested
in manufactures, two hundred and ten thousand four hundred and thirty-five
dollars. But I suppose you do not care for these details. If I should come
here again in a few years, I expect to see Alton three times its size, for
although it may not rival St. Louis, as the inhabitants imagine, it must be
the most considerable place after it, west of Cincinnati. The Illinois brings
to it the produce of the northern lakes and States—the Mississippi waft to
its doors the exports of the west, and takes it over to the Ohio, and to the
gulf of Mexico, from which last it is only four or five days distant. The
interests of religion and education employ the benevolent inhabitants to a
remarkable degree and many thousands are expended every year for the
furtherance of these objects. Among these are Shurtliff College, Alton
Theological Seminary, Alton Female Seminary. But enough of statistics,
you will say, and I hasten to our own personal adventures. We ordered a
carriage to-day to take us to Upper Alton, to visit our friends there, and
were quite pleased to see as nice a coach and pair of horses as we could see
in our own Broadway. After leaving the town we drove through some rich
prairie land, interspersed with trees, through which we obtained fine views
of the swift rolling Mississippi, and across it the verdant plains of Missouri,
with green swelling hills beyond. A drive of two miles brought us to Upper
Alton, a pretty small looking village, with spires and neat dwellings peeping
through the trees. This place is very pleasantly situated upon an elevated
plateau of ground about two miles from the lower town. Families here enjoy
great advantages, in regard to the education of their children, as colleges
and schools abound in its neighborhood. The society of this place is very
superior, and its situation healthy.
We found our friends in a large picturesque house in the cottage style,
surrounded by piazzas, whose pillars were wreathed with the clustering
Michigan rose, and shaded by the graceful cotton wood, and pretty red bud
and locust. Here indeed was a western paradise! upon the Mississippi banks
we found realized, those visions so many have sighed after, a lodge in the
vast wilderness, a secluded retreat from the haunts of men, where the
confusions and follies of the world are only remembered as a troubled
dream. A charming young family, and a well selected library, render this
retirement most delightful. A seminary upon a new plan had been lately
erected near their abode, and with a view of showing us every thing of
interest around them, our friends drove us in their carriage through a
pleasant road in an oak forest, to the Monticello Female Seminary. The
building is of limestone of that region, four stories in height. It stands
within a lawn ornamented with groups of trees, and a fine garden is laid out
in the rear. This extensive establishment was founded by Benjamin
Godfrey, Esq., a gentleman of Alton, who, to this benevolent purpose
devoted a large share of his property. While a resident of the west, many
examples had come before his eyes, of the miseries arising from the
imperfect education of the young women who settle here. The dearth of
servants rendered it necessary for the young wives around him to
superintend, if not assist in household labor, and he saw how much better it
was they should come prepared for these duties, and quite able to perform
them, instead of wearing themselves out, and pining away over tasks,
which, by being new, appear much more arduous than they are in reality. As
the evil lay in a defective system of education, this generous individual at
once saw how great a desideratum an institution would be, uniting useful
with ornamental accomplishments. With a public spirit to be much
applauded, Mr. Godfrey erected this spacious building, for educating ‘wives
for the west.’ Eighty young ladies is the limited number, all to be over
fourteen years of age. With the course of scientific study usual in female
seminaries, the pupils are taught music, instructed in religion, and in
various household duties. Among other lessons, they are taught to set a
table, arrange their rooms, even sweep and scrub them; wash, starch and
iron all their clothes. Some young ladies, who had been bred in idleness, or
who had come from the indulgent homes of Alton, or luxurious mansions of
St. Louis, where slaves await their nod, were very reluctant at first to
undertake these menial employments; but the advantage which so good a
school presented in its other departments, rendered their mothers deaf to
their complaints. They were soon, however, broken in, and sing as merrily
over their wash tubs, as the other pupils. As gain is not the object of its
generous founder, the price of admission is placed low, still there are some,
whose means are too straightened for even this, and these are allowed to
pay for their instruction, by labor in the house. The eagerness to get
admittance for young persons, is very great, and many thus receive
instruction who are of high respectability, and are enabled to attend to the
younger branches of the family, or even, if required, teach others. Some of
these young persons are beneficiaries of a benevolent society, called the
‘Ladies’ Association for Educating Females.’ The object of this society is to
‘encourage and assist young females to qualify themselves for teaching, and
to aid in supporting teachers in those places where they cannot otherwise be
sustained.’ Young females of all ages are selected from poor families and
placed in schools, where they are watched over by these benevolent ladies,
their tuition paid, and to each, every year, is addressed a circular letter of
advice, with the donation of an appropriate, instructive book. When
prepared, they are placed in situations where they can support themselves.
Several have become missionaries, and at this school are two of the
Cherokee tribe who are preparing to be teachers among their people. The
great amount of good performed by these ladies entitle them to the hearty
wishes of the benevolent and patriotic. The Rev. J. Spalding, in his address
before the seventh annual meeting at Jacksonville, says: ‘Since its
commencement it has aided one hundred and forty-seven young ladies in
their preparation for usefulness and heaven, thirty-one of whom are
professed followers of the Lamb.’ Now that I have thoroughly described the
institution, we will leave the carriage and enter the house. We were shown
into a neatly furnished parlor, where we were soon joined by the principal
of Monticello, the Rev. Theron Baldwin, a gentleman of great information
and piety. He kindly explained to us the principle upon which the seminary
was conducted, and then offered to show us the house. Every thing was
arranged with the greatest order and neatness. The dining, school, and
recitation rooms, were large, clean and airy, and the bed rooms
commodious. Upon the ground floor was a chapel fitted up with the
beautiful black walnut of their woods; here divine service is performed, by
the Rev. Mr. Baldwin, to the school and people of the neighborhood, who
assemble there every Sunday. You see the Illinois people are determined
their people shall enjoy the blessings of education; and when we reflect
how much the destiny of our nation depends upon the next generation, we
cannot devote our time or our money to a better purpose, than furthering
such institutions. We left the seminary, pleased with its arrangements, and
wishing all success to the generous individual who originated the
establishment. It is delightful to see wealth so well employed, to behold the
‘just steward’ thus ably disposing of his master’s property. Such
disinterestedness shone out in bold relief from the selfish and reckless waste
of fortune which we had beheld in our pilgrimage, like one of his own ‘oak
islands,’ upon a sunny and treeless prairie.
Once more we experienced the pains of parting, and were forced to leave
our friends that afternoon. We returned to our hotel where we are awaiting
the arrival of our steamboat which is to take us to St. Louis. When I look
around in this interesting country, and upon such towns as Alton, I wonder
why our Atlantic cities are so full of people. How many young men do I
know there, and indeed, whole families, who are struggling for a living, and
denying themselves every comfort that their spare income may suffice, to
give them a showy appearance in public; crammed into crowded boarding
houses, narrow, hot, dusty streets, when there is here in this wide beautiful
land, room, fresh air, fine scenery, employment, everything to be enjoyed, at
half the expense they are forced to lay out among so many discomforts. The
steamboat bell warns me to put up my note book, and I will resume when
aboard.
We found ourselves in a small steam-boat, which makes regular trips
between this town and St. Louis, twenty-five miles. Alton looked very
pretty when we turned to bid a sorrowful adieu, and we regretted our time
would not allow us to remain in this interesting place. We are now all
eagerly looking out, for the giant Missouri, whose junction with the
Mississippi is but two miles below Alton. At length the point is in view, all
gather upon the guards, and bend our eyes towards the right shore,—we are
now before the mouth and behold an extraordinary scene. The Missouri
does not, as travellers tell us, come rushing, and bounding, and dashing
along, striking the Mississippi with such a concussion that volumes of mist
arise in the air,—we beheld nothing so wonderful—a broad stream rolled
down between its verdant banks, rapidly, and very like a torrent, but in quite
a decent and proper manner. Its color—alas, for our pellucid lakes—is a tint
not often recognized by artists, but generally called gruel or soap-suds hue.
It holds in solution such an extraordinary quantity of clay, that one wonders
how the steamboat can force its way through it. Its rapid current is
distinguished by the curls and little whirlpools among the mud. Where it
meets the Mississippi is a small ridge of clay, and thick masses push
themselves under the clear brown water, coloring it more and more with its
impurity, until at last, the unhappy Mississippi, after struggling for some
time, is completely lost in the clayey stream, as some pure young heart,
striving against temptation, but lost at last. The streams continue separate
for some miles below St. Louis, and there the river takes the Missouri
character. I looked up the vista of this grand stream, as we passed its mouth,
with sentiments of awe. A mighty mass of water—it came rolling down
nearly four thousand miles from its source in the wild recesses of the Rocky
Mountains, bearing upon its bosom, not a fleet of Argosies, but materials
for their construction in whole forests of gigantic trees.
Such an admirer of water as you know I am, you may be sure I regretted
the soiling of my bright brunette Mississippi. To watch the foam of our
vessel had been a favorite pastime, but alas, what a change from the
diamond and emerald of our lakes, the topaz of the Illinois, the Zircon of
the Mississippi to the soapsuds of the Missouri. I have called the
Mississippi coffee color; it is now coffee-au-lait, and indignant must the
father of waters be under so great an oppression. Several green islands
adorn the stream, and the shores are spotted with a few houses, and now
chimney, and roof, and tower, piled up against each other, proclaim a city,
and we are soon in sight of the city of St. Louis. An old castellated Spanish
mansion is the first relic we have seen of that brave Castilian race which
once reigned over these broad lands. It is, I think, their ultima thula, their
most northern point. The appearance of St. Louis, from the water, is very
much like Albany, as it is built upon rising ground, consisting of two
plateaus of land, the last elevated several feet above the other, but its water
craft gave it quite a different character. We are used in our cities to behold
the water front, bristling with masts, but here we saw steamboats alone,
there being about seventy moored at the wharves, which gave a novel and
western appearance, to the scene. The flat boat, is fast disappearing, and
steamboats, are the only style of boat, with few exceptions, which we see;
of these, five hundred and eighty-eight have been built upon the western
waters.[21] The city of St. Louis stretches a mile along the elevated shore,
and nearly the same distance back. We almost fancied ourselves in New
York again, so great was the stir upon the wharf. The ware-houses, of brick
or limestone, made of the rock upon which they stand, appeared filled with
goods and customers, boxes and bales, carts and barrows were floating
about, and every one seemed active except the negro slaves who were
plodding about their work with the usual nonchalant gait of this merry but
indolent nation. We missed our good wharves at home, and even the paved
bank of Alton, for a shower had rendered the shore muddy. Surely some
Yankee might contrive a more commodious landing; something that might
rise and fall with the river, or a long pier. We drove to the Missouri House,
where we arrived in time for tea, and at night were lulled to sleep by a
Spanish guitar, and chattering of French voices from the shops and cafes in
our neighborhood.
LETTER IX.
St. Louis, July 12.
My dear E.—The days we have spent here, we have been very busy,
except Sunday, in examining every thing in and about this place. It is a very
nice city, and one of much importance, has increased much lately, and will
continue to increase. Its population is twenty-four thousand five hundred
and fifty-five. In 1825 it was only six thousand. There are several good
churches here, some of which, we attended to-day, it being Sunday. There is
a pretty episcopal of the Gothic form, a baptist church, of brick, having a
neat white porch in front—an unitarian, of plaster—a methodist, and a large
cathedral belonging to the catholics. This is an odd picturesque building,
and is one hundred and thirty-six feet by eighty-four broad, built of grey
stone. You enter by a porch supported by four Doric columns. The body of
the church is divided by columns, lighted by elegant chandaliers; the
sacristy and altar are very handsome; the windows of painted glass; and
there is in the church a fine painting of St. Louis, presented by Louis XVIII.
The bells are from Normandy. We had penetrated two thousand miles in the
wilderness of the west, and were glad to find we had not yet ‘travelled
beyond the Sabbath.’
What nice resting spells these Sabbaths are! When whirled upon the
stream of life, our attention occupied in avoiding the snags and sawyers and
cross currents in our channel, how refreshing, how necessary is it for us to
anchor for a little while, and look about, and consider our future course.
The Sabbath is a precious anchor to the soul, giving it time to meditate upon
its future career, and consult those charts which a kind heaven has sent to
direct its route. The Sabbath is necessary to man, and was given in mercy.
Physicians tell us rest is required for the machinery of man; that the brain
and nerves, while forever upon the stretch will decay much sooner than if
sometimes relaxed. It was the opinion of the great Wilberforce, that the
suicide of Lord Londonderry and that of Sir Samuel Romilly was owing to
their neglect of this day of rest. Speaking of the death of the former he says,
‘he was certainly deranged—the effect probably of continued wear and tear
of the mind. But the strong impression of my mind is, that it is the effect of
the non-observance of the Sabbath, both as abstracting from politics, from
the continual recurrence of the same reflections, and as correcting the false
views of worldly things, and bringing them down to their own
indistinctness. He really was the last man in the world who appeared likely
to be carried away into the commission of such an act, so cool, so self
possessed! It is very curious to hear the newspapers speaking of incessant
application to business, forgetting that by a weekly admission of a day of
rest, which our Maker has graciously enjoined, our faculties would be
preserved from the effects of this constant strain. I am strongly impressed
with the recollection of your endeavors to prevail upon the lawyers to give
up Sunday consultations in which poor Romilly would not concur. If he had
suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional relaxations it is highly probable
the strings would never have snapped, as they did, from over extension.’
July 13th.—This morning we took a coach and drove about to every

thing worth seeing in the city. In the French part of the town, the streets are
narrow and present quite a foreign and antique appearance. Here are several
neat, white-washed steep roofed dwellings surrounded by piazzas, and
occupied by the French part of the community. Main street, which
corresponds with our Pearl street, runs parallel with the river, about a mile.
It appears a very busy street and here one may obtain goods from all
quarters of the world brought up from New Orleans,—and domestic wares
from the country around. As you ascend from the river the streets are wider
and better built, and the upper end of the city is laid out in wide streets fast
filling up with handsome buildings, public and private, some of these last,
surrounded by courts and adorned by trees. Here many eastern people
dwell. A gentleman of the place, told us there had been nine hundred houses
put up in the city this year, and from appearances I should think this a true
estimate. There is a medical college in progress, and a large hotel nearly
finished, which is said to be the largest hotel in the States. It is of red brick
ornamented with white marble, and is altogether a handsome building. It is
to be called the ‘St. Louis House.’ Several institutions are conducted by
catholics, as the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and the University of St.
Louis. In the library of the latter are nearly seven thousand volumes. The
court house is of brick, with a circular portico supported by white columns.

The Russian Army and The Jewish Population 1914 1917 Libel Persecution Reaction Semion Goldin Full Chapter

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The Russian Army and the Jewish

Population, 1914–1917: Libel,

The Russian Army and

The Russian Army

Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism

Translation from the Russian language edition: “Russkaja armija i evrei.1914–1917” by

Cover illustration: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy Stock Photo

Many people and institutions helped me in my work on the book

Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Warburg Post-

1 See also Iz nedavnego proshlogo. Rechi evreiskikh deputatov v Gosurdarstvennoi Dume

Material collected by Jewish public figures was disseminated within

about hostages”; and a “Note about pogroms,” prepared by G. M. Erlikh.

pertaining to Russia and the Gregorian in reference to events occurring

5 Deportations of the Jewish Population and Hostage

AAN Archiwum Akt Nowych (Central Archives of Modern Records,

Fig. 5.1 Elderly people from the Jewish alms-house in Anykščiai,

In one of the scenes in Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, a Cossack

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

1. Why did Russian generals and soldiers, unlike their European

My book delves into background issues because in order to understand

Russian-Jewish elite against the army authorities’ anti-Jewish policy and to

Jewish historiography justifiably portrays the treatment of Russian Jews

number of documents enables us also to envision the life of ordinary Jews

13 Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London: Penguin, 2004).

resource, an object of study and transformation in the desired direction.

18 Peter Holquist, “State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet

… warfare included not only spontaneous outbursts of violence by indi-

23 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 11–16, 21–22, 136–139.

My analysis in this work of the Russian army’s relationship with the

Researchers understandably regard the events of 1914–1917 as the first

41 Peter Holquist’s account of the preparation of the Supreme Command’s January

The Russian Army and the Jews at the Start

The Army’s Role in Political and Social Life

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

budget.3 At the start of the twentieth century, Russia expended 5.9% of

3 W. C. Fuller, Jr., Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton,

The government tried to keep the officers completely detached from

military units participated in suppressing 3893 disturbances; arms were

27 Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 130.

The Russian Army and the Jews

development is extremely important for an understanding of the evolution

The Russian officer corps—itself heterogeneous in composition—did not

56 Voina i evrei, 55–56.

62 Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 90–91.

Draft Plans to Abolish Army Conscription of Jews

“Sits partly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,

Here however in these pretty nooks he sits undisturbed, for no boys

July 13th.—This morning we took a coach and drove about to every

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