"The Directory fights against the pogroms..." Read the little book published in Berlin by the Ukrainian mission under the title, "Die Lage der Juden in der Ukraine?' (The position of the Jews in the Ukraine), and you will come across a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian People's Republic, in which special attention is called to the fact that "the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic has made it its task to remove the possibilities of incitements, pogroms and other excesses."
This resolution was passed on the i8th of August, i.e., at the time, as explained before, when the pogroms had lost their value as methods of political warfare. The entire statement of the question in this resolution is also characteristic: "The Council of Ministers having heard the report of P. Krasny, Minister for Jewish affairs, concerning the situation that has developed in connection with the Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine, and especially in Kiev, and also abroad, makes the following order.... Advices full of lies, falsehoods and incitements deliberately confuse the places where the pogroms were perpetrated by the Bolshevists with those instituted by a reactionary clique in the Ukraine, who are in union with the underhanded reaction of Denikin and the Poles.... In lying publications and in open letters addressed to the most important representatives in Europe all of this is imputed to the Ukrainian People's Republic, which has made it its aim energetically to suppress all pogrom excesses...."
The passages italicized by me show clearly the motives which led to the publication of this document.... They follow from the situation created in Kiev (i.e., the public central place where there were no pogroms, but where public opinion at this terrible time cursed the Directory), as well as the situation abroad, which pressed so hard upon the Directory in its fight against Denikin's principle of a "united and undivided Russia."
This resolution is not concerned with the colossal evils, political and economic; it is not concerned with the destruction and extirpation of a nation, which was "helping in the evolution of the Ukrainian state"; it is not concerned with the horrors, which put in the shade those of the middle ages; it is not concerned with national relief to those who were injured through the guilt of the Directory and their agents (the offer to contribute 11,460,000 griven, i.e., 5,730,000 rubles, seems ridiculous enough, besides the offer was not made until the 1 5th of August, 1919) — it is concerned only with the political uselessness of the Jewish pogroms, which brought the Ukrainian Government into an unfavorable position. The resolution is only a confirmation of what I have already said.
To sum up, the Directory used pogrom politics as long as they promised, in a given instant under the military and political circumstances, success in their struggle against the Soviet power. This method was a double-edged sword for the Directory. On the one hand the anti- Jewish parts of the army were welded
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together, but on the other hand military discipline was undermined. The anti-Bolshevist agitation under the motto, "Cut down the Jews, for they are bourgeois," produced in the masses a Bolshevistic radicalism; while the motto, "Cut down the Jews, for they are communists," strengthened the reaction, which did not bow to the political course of the Directory, but inclined to the All-Russian reaction of General Denikin, whom the Directory so much feared. The bitter fight against the Soviet power transformed this method into a continuous system. It was only after the Denikin reaction had triumphed, when the Directory rehabilitated itself in the eyes of West European public opinion and had to seek support from the Jewish socialistic parties of the right — it was only then that the Rada of the People's Ministers spoke a decisive word, and the chief Ataman, Petlura, issued his order of the day to the troops, on the 26th of August, 1919.
CHAPTER
WITH the occupation of Kiev by the Soviet power,, the so-called internal front was first formed, the rising of the Ukrainian peasants against the Soviet government. The latter extended its power over the large cities (Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Odessa, Chernigov and others) and the territory covered by the railroads. The localities a few versts away from the railroads were already in revolt. The suppression of these uprisings, which always assumed more intense forms, was the essential characteristic of the Soviet period in the Ukraine, while the history of the peasant uprisings represented at the same time the history of the Jewish massacres in the Ukraine.