The pogroms of the eighties took place without meeting resistance by the Jews, who as in the middle ages looked upon it as an unavoidable punishment of Heaven. Young and old hid in cellars and lofts and did not venture in the daylight until the danger was over. So also in the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, which was enacted by the dictator Plehve as a method for intimidating the Jewish socialist youth. It was after this pogrom that the Bund for the first time gave out the watchword "Self-defense." Under the conditions of the time it proved to be pretty effective and even led to definite positive results.
Up to the year 1905 the pogroms were organized according to a definite plan. At the instance of the police department, the governors with the help of the heads of the police staged the "popular indignation and revolt against the Jews" by means of a crowd consisting of disguised policemen, domestic servants, police spies and well-paid city hoodlums. By reason
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of the comparative weakness of the opposition and revolutionary movement at that time, the tsarist government took pains to preserve a measure of decorum before western Europe, and the police as well as the military remained neutral. It was therefore not difficult to offer resistance to the cowardly and more or less drunken crowd, who thought themselves quite secure. At the first shots the crowd dispersed. On the purely technical side the pogroms were so organized that the actors were divided into small groups, every group taking a different street. By organized reconnaissance the defenders could block their way. A few shots in the air sometimes and the pogromists would scatter. So it was during the pogrom in Gomel, where the Self-defense organized by the Bund played a very important role.
Quite different is the character of the pogroms in the years 1905 and 1906, in which the participation of the authorities is clearly evident. In South Russia as well as in other places the pogromists were surrounded by armed policemen and sometimes soldiers, who defended them against all attacks of the "Self-defense divisions." The latter were prevented from getting to the places where the pogroms were going on, or they were shot at when they came near. The former type of self-defense (primitive groups armed with revolvers, knives, etc.) were no longer adequate to offer resistance. It was now necessary to organize properly armed divisions. So it was in Riga in the year 1905. The pogrom, in which the police and the army participated, was stifled in its very beginning by armed Lettish divisions, who were essentially disciplined, revolutionary war divisions. Where such divisions did not exist, the pogroms, which had the character of military punitive expeditions (Siedlce, Bielostok), passed off safely for the actors. To be able to offer resistance it was no longer sufficient to have Self-defense in the technical sense of the word, but it was necessary to have an organization of military divisions, a thing which was impossible except in localities where certain conditions obtained, in which such things as open armed insurrection occurred (in the Baltic provinces).
A summons to Self-defense necessarily meant under such conditions a call to an armed uprising.
From the foregoing chapters can be seen the character of the pogroms in the Ukraine in the year 1919. Since their purpose was the destruction of the Jewish nation according to a concretely worked out plan and by means of armed regular troops or insurrectionist bands which were likewise armed to the teeth, it was necessary in order to fight against them to create an army similar to that of the aggressors. From the sad chronicle of events during the pogroms in the Ukraine it can be seen that in the great majority of cases it was only after a temporary defeat of the aggressors that the pogrom in each case came to an end. Sometimes, as we shall see later, the cessation was due to the assistance of the Christian elements of the population.
At the beginning of the pogrom wave the Jews had recourse to the old method of protection, namely bribing the commanders of the various divisions. By paying a considerable sum to the authorities it was sometimes possible to buy one's safety (as was the case in Kremenchug). Often, however, this was not successful. The money was taken and the massacres went on nevertheless. Nay it was worse in such cases, for the Jews believed they were safe and did not hide.
UKRAINE