This conviction created the atmosphere in which the elemental force of the masses, aroused and excited in the process of the revolutionary ferment, could be guided in the direction of annihilating this defenseless nation for the sole purpose of thereby injuring the political enemies of the Directory. The Directory fanned the national hate, drew forth from the depths of the Ukrainian national soul the slumbering distrust and antipathy, planted in the course of historical development, against the Jews as strangers, the Jews as commercial middlemen, the Jews as the former farmers of the lord's estates, who were hanged by the ancestors of the peasant of to-day together with the priest and the Polish "pan" (proprietor of great landed estates). The Directory knew how to awaken this hate and to give it a definite form and direction and a definite political content. No wonder, therefore, that this Machiavellian method bore such fruit. The agitation of the Directory was not merely an incitement of the masses in an indefinite way, it was in actual content an unequivocal instigation to murder the Jews. The lamentations and pharisaic attempts at justification, to the effect that the Directory could not control the bands or the crowds, that the latter had gone further than the Directory had intended, can not exculpate it in any way, not even legally, not to say morally and politically. It is not merely that it could have foreseen the consequences of its doings, it did foresee them, it desired them, counted on them and took advantage of them. What is known in criminal law as "excess of the executor" does not apply here. Here the executors played the motif whispered to them, with the precision of a virtuoso, and did it to the greatest satisfaction and joy of the instigators.
In August the pogrom crowds became smaller. The political situation changed. The Bolsheviki were driven from the Ukraine. Petlura and his people attained what they wanted — the enemy was beaten. The beneficiary of the success, however, was another. Denikin occupied Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, and was approaching Kiev. The changed situation demanded other methods of fighting. The method of Jewish massacres was no longer needed, and so was given up. As already mentioned, the Directory
UKRAINE
even passed a resolution to fight against pogroms. To be sure there was another element here that must be mentioned. According to communications sent to us from many sides and according to the existing reports of the Ukrainian papers, the standpoint of international politics was also taken into consideration in the pogrom agitation. Not only the heads of the political bodies, but the village intellectuals and to a certain extent even the masses were aware of the significance of the international position of the Ukraine. The Ukrainian flat country had had a thorough object lesson in this matter, such as the German occupation with its stringent regime, the occupation of Odessa and the southern coast by the Allies, the negotiations of the Directory with the Allies through General Grekov, and so on. Suffering from want of the most absolute necessities, manufactured ware, shoes, salt, machines, etc., the Ukrainian village was eager for commercial relations with western Europe. The village intellectuals represented by the priests and teachers (we have seen that they took an active part in the excesses of the bands) carried on their agitation by saying that the Entente desired the destruction of the Bolsheviki. As Jews and communists were the same, Jewish pogroms would represent the gift which the Ukrainian people must present to the Entente, and the latter would not be long in signifying their recognition of the Ukrainian people in return. Now in August the Jewish pogroms as a method of fighting proved themselves not only useless, but, as was said before, harmful for the reason that the vague rumors of the massacres which had penetrated to the West had produced great public indignation. The withdrawal which was now whispered to the regular trpops by the Directory was understood by their devoted Batki.... The pogroms diminished in violence, they were no longer all-destructive, but like the distant thunder of a past storm, they assumed the innocent form, according to Ukrainian concepts, of pillage of Jewish possessions and occasional acts of violence and murder.
We learned later from a reliable source that Batko Makhno had issued a proclamation to his insurrectionists, in which he ordered them to discontinue Jewish pogroms, for "according to a communication of Batko Petlura, the Entente is very much dissatisfied on that account" — a step which seems very likely on the part of the wise and far sighted Makhno.
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