Matusovo is a town in the canton of Cherkassy with a population of seven or eight thousand, of which 160 to 180 families are Jewish. There is a sugar- factory with 200 local workers. The Jewish population of Matusovo lived almost entirely by petty trade. It was not very thrifty and remained in the same condition throughout the whole period of the war, and in contrast to other places did not engage in speculation and did not get rich. In political matters the Jewish population had no interest in politics or party divisions. The relations between Jews and Christians were in general satisfactory, although isolated clashes had sometimes taken place. With the last change of government the relations between the two parts of the population changed sharply for the worse. The peasants of the region around Matusovo regarded the new regime with great suspicion; they considered it as something accidental and not to be taken seriously, almost as foreign as the regime of the
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Germans. This suspicion towards the new regime was artificially stimulated in the peasant masses by the local intellectuals, who from the first day were in opposition to the new regime. The local Ukrainian intellectuals, in the persons of the postmaster Kulik, the seminarist Masig, the teachers Palega, Garnitzsky, Zimnitzsky and others, carried on open agitation against the Soviet rule; and their chief trump in this game was the national question. "The government of Petlura," the postmaster Kulik would explain to the peasants, "is our real, native Ukrainian government, but the government of the bolsheviki is a Jew government." The teacher Palega assured the peasants: "In Cherkassy I visited the commissariat of education, and what did I see there? Nothing but Jews; the whole commissariat is full of them."
In the very first days of the new government, by order of the Soviet guerrilla detachment which passed through in pursuit of Petlura, there was formed in Matusovo a revolutionary committee, which, however, did not decide a single question without an assembly. After three weeks the revolutionary committee was succeeded by an Executive Committee, but it was little different from the revolutionary committee; the same make-up, the same influence, the same "assembly" form of government, and finally the same negative attitude towards the Jewish portion of the population — which was sharply manifested more than once (the cases of Leschinsky, Kholkovsky, Babitsky, the taking away of portions of land from Jews who had received them in 1918, etc.)
Several days before the pogrom the Executive Committee received from Shpola a provocatory document with the signature of a commissar of distinctly Jewish name (I think Goldstein), whose contents were as follows: that the churches should be sealed and the church furniture and fixtures brought to Shpola. The rumor of this "document" quickly spread among the peasants, and through them also among the Jews, who interpreted it as a signal for a pogrom. Two or three days later, on May 10, certain horsemen brought to Matusovo Grigoriev's manifesto ("Universal"), which was made public on that same day by the secretary of the Executive Committee, Kesser, before a special assembly called for that purpose. Whether he really read this from the manifesto or whether it was his own invention, at any rate Kesser declared that an order had been received to destroy all Jews. The ground for such inventions was prepared to this extent, that the peasants saw nothing improbable in such an order, believed in it fully, and talked about it to the Jews they
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knew, some with malicious joy, some with sympathy. On the same day the Jews observed that Borodiansky, who had lived most among the peasants and best knew their activities and frame of mind, left the place with all his family. All these facts, together with many others, convinced the Jews of Matusovo that the same catastrophe which the Jews of Lebedin, Zlatopol and other places had recently experienced was approaching them. Continuing to hope up to the last minute, though hoping rather for a miracle than for any definite help, some Jews on the day before the pogrom wanted to send their families and some of their things to Shpola, near by; but they met with the definite opposition of the militia. This still more increased the feeling of alarm, which grew with every minute.