n from them by force, at low prices, and carried
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to Germany. On the basis of exaggerated reports of "the wealth of the Jews," there developed among the peasants a feeling of envy and a desire for city products (manufactured goods, shoes), of which there was nothing in the Ukrainian village, rumor having it that the Jews in the larger centers enjoyed a superfluity of such things.
The anti-Jewish sentiment came to the fore in the Ukrainian village at the time when the Soviet government took the helm. This government is in the eyes of the peasants a foreign importation from Moscow. The well-to-do peasant of the Ukrainian village is opposed to communistic tendencies. Besides, being a landlord in possession of the soil which he regards as his consecrated and inviolable property, he sees in the Soviet government principally a fiscal power, which requisitions his grain and other agricultural products at maximum prices, paying for them in worthless little papers. A tenacious and obstinate fight arose between the Ukrainian village and the Soviet government. The Soviet government brought for the first time into the village the Jewish official, as a representative of the state power. Under the tsar the law did not allow the Jews to hold any state or public office. At the time of the Provisional Government the whole power was actually in the hands of the central Rada, under which all local posts were held by Ukrainians, usually representatives of the local population. Under the Soviet regime, on the other hand, Jews also were government representatives, holding central as well as local offices. In districts where the Jews formed the majority of the population, a large number of Jews belonged to the executive committee. The mere fact that besides the Jewish middleman there was also a
Jewish representative of the state force called forth a feeling of hostility on the part of the Ukrainian peasant. The Jew whom he was accustomed to look down upon and to treat with contempt, suddenly stood before him as the possessor of power, demanding respect. In addition, this same Jew appeared as the representative of a government foreign to the village and the object of its hatred. As a result the peasant became suspicious of the entire Jewish population, regarding all the Jews without exception as members of the Soviet regime, which enabled them to exercise power against the Christian population. The idea took firm root in his mind that the Jewish nation was endeavoring to dominate over the Christian peasant. In the later pogroms this attitude found expression in the words, "What! You want to rule over us?" The Ukrainian peasant had a tendency to impute to the Jewish commissars and generally to the whole Jewish population in the neighboring towns and districts all the sins committed against him by the new regime (requisitioning, mobilization, barrage troops, executons by order of the extraordinary commissions).
The traditional feeling of distrust and suspicion of the Jew was excited and fostered by the above mentioned social and political factors.
There is still, however, a great gulf between the vague feelings of envy, contempt, even hatred, and those cruel acts perpetrated upon the Jews in the Ukrainian massacres. To bridge it an external force was necessary, which compelled the peaceful peasants to overcome their moral and other inhibitions, aroused the slumbering instincts of destruction and hate, gave to the whole complex of vague feelings and sentiments a political form and instilled it into the minds of i UKRAINE
the peasants by anti- Jewish agitation. For this purpose it was necessary to accuse the Jews as such of exploitation of labor and speculation, to represent them as "bourgeois" and at the same time to brand them as advocates of the Soviet power and of communism, so as to organize the peasants and push them in a definite direction. Under the influence of this force came the peasant avalanche, continually increasing in scope, moving faster and faster and burying under it tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews.