Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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to the workers.”12
At a later date, the satirical poet Leri (V. V. Klopotovskii) wrote the following work regarding the adaptive abilities of a certain segment of the Russian intelligentsia:
When the evil Central Executive Committee, without any right,
Began its march against the people,
And forced them to clean ditches,
As if they had sinister intentions,
Blessed was he who did not waste the day,
And going to the Communist Commissars,
Did not hide his social skills,
And immediately joined the service,
He who having found the norm,
Managed to understand the historical moment,
And placed one foot, so to say,
On the Soviet platform,
He who managed to take on a loyal face,
Even if he was not of the Bolshevik race.13
But it was not rations alone that led people to decide to serve the Soviet state. Under the Bolsheviks, a hitherto unknown democratization of power was taking place. It was democratic in the literal sense of the word. The demos occupied positions of power that previously would have been unthinkable, due to class, religious, or educational restrictions. “I have seen so many people, particularly among the Jews, who in old times were virgins when it came to power, so many people who were in love with the task before them,” wrote Viktor Shklovsky in Finland in 1922.14
Lenin claimed that the Jews who joined the Soviet civil service “eliminated the widespread sabotage that we had encountered immediately after the October Revolution and which had been extremely dangerous for us.”15 A discussion of Gorky's pamphlet “About Jews” (“O evreiakh”) gave Lenin the opportunity to further elucidate the role that Jews and other ethnic minorities had played in the revolution. In particular, Lenin touched upon the importance of the evacuation of the factories and the Jewish population from the Baltics to Central Russia. While the “Latvians induced steadiness and order” into the ranks of the Russian working class, a “significant number of Jews from the middle intelligentsia” “sabotaged the sabotage” of the civil servants and greatly assisted the revolution in a difficult moment. He emphasized that the Bolsheviks were able to “seize and significantly alter the state apparatus due to this reserve of sober, literate and more or less capable group of new officials.” Lenin wholeheartedly agreed with S. M. Dimanshtein's contention that Jewish “elements” played a large role in the revolution, though he thought it unwise to “single out this moment in the press for numerous reasons.”16
Of course, in order to aid the revolution in the central provinces, the Jews had to get there first. This move was carried out by the military authorities during World War I. The number of refugees and displaced persons, according to various sources, ranged from 500,000 to a million. Massive deportations and the impossibility of resettling the displaced within the Pale forced the government to temporarily lift the restrictions on Jewish residency outside of the Pale in August of 1915.
There were 211,691 Jewish refugees and evacuees in Russia, according to EKOPO (The Jewish Committee for Assistance to War Victims) and the Tatianin Committee,17 the organizations set up to provide them with assistance. Of course, the true number is probably somewhat larger, as it is highly unlikely that all refugees were accounted for by charitable organizations.
The refugees arrived from a number of regions (Northwestern—136,431; Poland—26,223; the Baltics—22,242; Southwestern—11,426; no data—12,691). The gubernias with the highest numbers of refugees were the following: Kovno (69,313), Grodno (30,356), Vilna (30,149), and Courland (16,782).
By the second half of 1916, the “old” districts of the Pale had lost 116,698 (55 percent) of their Jewish population, while the “new” districts had lost 94,993 (45 percent). The refugees resettled in the following locales: areas near the front, 66,008 (31 percent); southern gubernias, 65,108 (31 percent); central gubernias, 33,458 (16 percent); Volga region, 34,015 (16 percent); other 13,103 (6 percent). In sum, Jewish refugees resettled in 349 different locations throughout Russia.18 Around 95 percent of Jewish refugees who left the Pale of Settlement resettled in cities.19 Only fragmentary information regarding specific cities is available. According to a census of Jewish refugees carried out in March 1917, 4,307 Jews resettled in Voronezh. By the end of 1916, 500 Jews had fled to the Belgorod uezd in the Kursk gubernia.20 The Jewish population of Rostov-on-Don increased by 2,000 individuals from 1914 to 1918, largely due to Jewish refugees.21
Charitable organizations registered 140,988 men and 14,579 women, from a variety of professional backgrounds. Craftsmen and those working in industry comprised 51.8 percent of all refugees, those in trade 36.7 percent. Smaller groups included the “free” professions (7 percent) and those employed in private service (1.6 percent) and agriculture (1 percent).22
The government contributed nearly 17 million rubles in aid to Jewish refugees. More than 10 million rubles in additional aid came from abroad, including 7.25 million rubles sent from the United States, with the rest coming from Great Britain, South Africa, France, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and Scotland. Contributions came from both Jewish and Christian charities. The Jewish Central Committee for War Victims collected 3,769,799.88 rubles, of which 2,0205,84.44 were donated by Petrograd Jews. Aid from July 1, 1914 until July 1, 1917 totaled 31,119,917.44 rubles. Though a significant sum to be sure, it was hardly enough to compensate for all the loss and hardship experienced by the refugees during their exodus.
Jewish refugees received the least assistance from their Russian compatriots and non-Jewish organizations within Russia. Their total donations amounted to less than a third of the sum given by the Scottish Christian Fund, which totaled 291,892 rubles. The main donors on the Russian side were N. A. Shakhov and a certain Tishchenko (10,000 each) and the editorial offices of Russkie Vedomosti (15,000).23
Upon their arrival, the Jewish refugees were hardly given a warm welcome. The first 600 refugees to Vladimir were personally met at the railway station by the governor, who informed them that only 60 of them were allowed to stay, while the rest had to travel farther north. The governor of Tambov interfered in the distribution of governmental aid to the refugees, claiming they were receiving more than adequate support from their coreligionists in Petrograd. Several local authorities also made it perfectly clear that the newcomers should not show their faces on the street.24 Of course, such prejudices were not limited to Russians. An English nurse by the name Violetta Thurstan managed to outdo her Russian coworkers during her time in the Polish territories. She believed that Jewish refugees suffered less than other nationalities as they were, according to their nature and instincts, a nomadic people with no roots. Thus, she reasoned, it was easier for Jews to settle into new surroundings and adapt to new work. Moreover, they were assisted by their fellow Jews. Thurstan was convinced that many Jews were sympathetic to the Germans, and that any impoverished Jew could making up for his losses by selling information to the enemy.25
By December 1917, there were approximately 2,483,666 Jews in German occupied territories. The Polish territories under Russian control contained 1,675,666 Jews (14 percent of the total population of Poland), while the Vilna gubernia (excluding two uezds), and the Grodno, Kovno, and Courland gubernias held 808,000, or 15 percent of the total population. In the former Pale gubernias there were approximately 3,305,000 Jews (10 percent of the population), and there were 532,000 Jews (0.5 percent) living outside the Pale, for a total of 3,837,000 people. In addition, 78,832 Jews (0.6 percent) lived in the Caucuses, 58,730 (0.6 percent) were in Siberia, and 17,532 (0.2 percent) were in Central Asia.26
For our purposes, however, the Jewish population of Moscow and Petrograd is of much greater importance. According to a law published