The circular begins with the words: We are living in a terrible time. The days through which we live are terrible not because of the new efforts of the Bolsheyiki, if only for a short time, to take to themselves a, few important points, our Kiev among them, from which they were driven out by the volunteer army, but because "a wave of bloody, cruel and bestial Jewish pogroms is approaching Kiev."
After a lyric and dramatic description "of the bloody extermination of a whole people, of the loss again and again of thousands of new victims, of defenseless women and children, of old men and vigorous youths who were shot or cut down with the sword, torn in pieces and left to perish beneath the ruins of burneddown villages and towns" — a description of such definiteness as if it dealt with a principle or a well-known fact of undoubted certainty — the circular says, "Now this disgrace is passing through Kiev."
"In the name of the provocatory calumnies, pub-
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lished even in the press, charging the Jews with supporting the Bolshevist advance, low elements of the city population, sharpers demoralized by soldiers (as has been established from special orders) enter the houses in bright daylight, impose contributions on the Jewish population (sic!) in amounts of hundreds of thousands of rubles, take away their last shirt and commit murder and excesses of all sorts. "
So this is what happened in Kiev, and this is what we learn from the organ of the Kiev council of labor unions. This literary and political masterpiece would completely suffice to establish the author of the, doubtless, inspired circular, as well as the purpose of the composition. The quoted fragments are, however, only the beginning, the necessary introduction merely to a lengthy explanation of the question laid down in the circular. What is the ground of this blind hate, i.e. the hate against the Jews?
In their attempt to throw light historically upon the Jewish question in Poland and the Ukraine, the authors of the circular solve this complicated question simply, easily and without the slightest doubts. The responsible parties in all things are the Polish landlords, who left the peasants too little land, drove them into the net of the usurers and then took away the gains from the usurers themselves. The Russian peasant and the Jew, so it says, had to suffer equally from the landlords and their rule. But the peasant did not know who was his real enemy and hated the Jew. When the Ukraine came under the rule of the tsar, there was no change. The tsar's government taught the people that all evil came from the Jews, furthered pogroms, supported them directly, and in this way prolonged the time before its downfall. Finally, however, the workmen and then the whole people recognized that it was not this or that people who were their enemy, but the government, under which the peasant lived in want and under which the workman was compelled to be satisfied with miserable conditions of work. The people rose against the real enemy and overthrew the tsarist regime. The enemies of the people, however, knew that if they could again make the latter see in the Jews the responsible authors of their want, they would place no difficulties in the way of the attempt to restore the tsaristic regime, which was the real cause of the suffering of the people. And so they began again to spread calumnies against the Jews, and "the people, wearied by harrassing agitation and exhausted by long years of intolerable sufferings, vents its fury and hate on the innocent, unhappy and tormented Jewish people."
And "in this terrible moment" the Kiev council of the labor unions directed a passionate appeal to all confederates to unite in fighting for the preservation of that which the great revolution of 1917 had brought.
Much can be said about this circular, as the reader sees. Having given extracts, we do not consider it necessary at this moment to say anything further about it. For is it really worth while to say anything about the "passionate appeal" to fight for the preservation of that which the treasonable revolution of 1917 brought to Russia and the Russian people, when everybody knows that it caused a disgraceful desertion of the front in the World War, a shameful betrayal of our common cause with the Allies, defense of the freedom and independence of the several states, the dissolution of Russia, destruction of the entire economic life, general impoverishment and the triumph of i i UKRAINE