This came out very 'clearly in the pogrom in Cherkassy. This case being extraordinarily important, we shall deal a little more at length with the statements of a member of the left flank (the Jewish). On the 1 5th of May at daybreak the Soviet troops left the city. In consequence of the unsafe situation at the front, the staff ordered the organization not only of the communists but also of the trade unions. The Christian workmen withdrew from the meeting. The labor division going to the front consisted mainly of Jews. The sending of such a division excited new talk among the population incited by the reactionary officers and pogromists. This division occupied the extreme left flank. Their equipment was for technical reasons insufficient. The arms brought to the city could not, by reason of certain conditions, be kept at the front. During the clash the soldiers of Grigoriev purposely allowed themselves to be captured and then developed an anti-Semitic agitation. They had a very definite theme: "Brothers are fighting against one another. There is no difference in our aims. It is the 'Jews and the Communists' who circulate reports that Makhno is coming with a great army...." "This agitation," the witness says, "was successful even among the members of the Red Army, despite the protests of the intelligent persons and of the whole party and labor division."
The two partisan armies, the army of the Soviet and of Grigoriev, find a common speech and common feelings and sentiments (anti-Semitic). Between these two the purely Jewish division forms a wedge, as it were, which by its protest apparently represents the third party, which prevents the "brothers" from uniting. The union came to pass. During its retirement to the bridge, the Jewish division was pressed back to the premises of a sugar factory inhabited by a poor class
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of laborers engaged in the factory. They already knew that the Soviet troops had suffered a defeat, for Grigoriev's troops were already in the city (in consequence of poor information service, the Jewish division knew nothing of it as yet and withdrew too late). The majority of the local workmen armed themselves and opposed the retiring division. They shot at the men who were retiring to the bridge over the Dnieper. "Great numbers of men attacked them as they retired from their positions and killed them on the spot with stones, pulling them down from their horses. Young people and women, also, took part. They fired on them from the gates and from behind house corners as they withdrew to the Dnieper. They killed every one who looked like a Jew even if he did not belong to the Red Army. The Jews who were captured in their positions were at once torn to pieces. One division under the leadership of an officer met a body of prisoners. He had the Jews separated from the Christians and shot the former on the spot.... Their bodies were mutilated as were those of the men killed at the sugar factory."
The statements of this participant are fully confirmed by the account of the former president of the city Duma, V. Petrov. The latter said, "I know that the executive committee of the Soviet proposed to the trade unions to organize city guards, that a committee was appointed, but received no arms or cartridges from the executive committee, since there were not enough even for the troops. Some of the members of the unions, mainly mechanics (needle makers, shoemakers and others), went with the troops to the front, where they fought on the left flank near the sugar factory. When they retired on this flank the workmen were killed almost to a man by the local population." From the tragedy of Cherkassy we may draw the conclusion that the idea of a Jewish legion advocated by some nationalistic groups of Ukrainian and other Jews is a political idea thoughtless and naive; practi-/ cally, however, and in its realization it represents an enormous provocation which might lead to the complete annihilation of the whole of Jewry, for the Ukrainian peasants saw in this legion a union of Jews to destroy Christianity. The anti-Semitic front would have been very much strengthened by such a legion.