💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › voline-pogrom.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:37:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Pogrom Author: Voline Date: 1934 Language: en Topics: jewish pogroms, antisemitism, definitions, Anarchist Encyclopedia Source: Retrieved on 24th September 2020 from https://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/voline/pogrom.htm Notes: Originally published in the Encyclopédie anarchiste. Paris, Librairie Internationale, 1934. Translated by Mitchell Abidor.
Pogrom, noun, masculine.
Word directly adopted with a precise and even a special meaning by other
languages, and in particular French.
Philologically the word pogrom is composed of the root “grom” and the
prefix “po.” (Note in this respect that the word “progrom,” frequently
employed by the French press in the place and with the meaning of pogrom
is an error, a mutilation of the real term. The word “progrom” has no
meaning, the prefix “pro” in Russian having a meaning that cannot be
adapted to the root “grom.” The word “progrom” is thus non-existent.)
Using the root “grom” the Russian language forms the verb “gromit” which
means to devastate, sack, massacre. Taking that same root “grom” and
adding the prefix “po” we get the noun “pogrom,” which means the act of
devastating, sacking, massacring. (Adding to the same root “grom”
another Russian prefix “raz” we obtain another noun, “razgrom,” which
also means devastation, ruin. But while the word “razgrom,” aside from
its special meaning of military debacle, means a purely material
devastation or disorder, provoked by natural or unavoidable forces, the
term “pogrom” clearly means an act of sacking or massacre that is
conscious, voluntary, and premeditated rather than spontaneous, carried
out by several people with the goal of devastating, sacking, destroying,
pillaging, harming, assassinating, or massacring.)
We thus mean by pogrom, in the general meaning of the term, every
voluntary act of more or less serious devastation or destruction of
material values as well as human life; an insane savage act carried out
by several people, or rather an unleashed mob pushed to this crime by
blind hatred and anger, by a nearly pathological thirst for vengeance,
violence, blood.
But if we used this term only in its general meaning there would be no
reason for it to be borrowed from Russian by foreign languages. The word
massacre, for example, would largely suffice in the French language. And
in fact, all the “pogroms” that have taken place throughout history, in
France and in other countries, religious, political, and other pogroms,
are qualified as massacres in French.
In borrowing the word pogrom from the Russian language the aim was to
designate something completely special, something specifically Russian.
In fact, in Russian the word pogrom signifies, aside from its general
meaning, especially and above all a mass massacre of Jews. Massacres of
this kind: pogroms, periodically took place in Russia from the end of
the nineteenth century until the fall of Tsarism, and even beyond. And
it was in this specific sense that the word pogrom was adopted by
foreign languages. Struck by the monstrosity of such proceedings in the
heart of the twentieth century, carried away by a feeling of repulsion
against such abominations, the peoples of other countries took the habit
of calling these horrors by their original name.
The reader will find more detail on pogroms in the entry [in the
“Encyclopédie anarchiste”] for “Anti-Semitism.” We will complete it
here.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century tsarist absolutism began to be
increasingly seriously threatened by all kinds of revolutionary and
popular movements, the natural consequences of a revolting political
oppression and the horrible material and moral situation of the working
masses.
In order to face down these movements the government found nothing
better than to resort to the tried and true recipe, notably,
increasingly severe repression along with the canalization of popular
discontent towards manifestations less dangerous for the regime. In
order to do this the government did not hesitate to exploit the
credulity, the ignorance, and the religious prejudices of the masses, as
well as appealing to the lowest instincts of the “human animal” so as to
place responsibility for all misfortunes on the Jews and to orient the
people’s anger in their direction. The governmental and right thinking
newspapers carried out systematic propaganda against the Jews. They were
accused of treason, of anti-national plots, of all possible crimes and
vices. And from time to time they sent out against them groups recruited
from the lower deaths of the police and the unemployed elements of the
cities. We must hasten to say that the real working population remained
more or less foreign to these acts of savagery and that the proletariat
of the cities often organized the defense of the Jewish population
against those who carried out the massacres. As for the police, even
when they didn’t directly lead the massacres they prepared them behind
the scenes. Closing their eyes to what was happening they only
intervened when the events threatened to go beyond the pre-established
framework and take on “exaggerated” dimensions.
What happened during “non-exaggerated” pogroms surpasses in horror
anything that could be imagined. Apartments, sometimes even entire
houses sacked; property stolen and carried away with the savage cries of
triumphant beasts; men killed en masse with unheard of cruelty; women
attacked and disemboweled amidst the ruins; children seized and skewered
on sabers or crushed against walls. And little distinction was made
between wealthy Jews and the poor Jewish working population. The
detailed descriptions of certain large-scale Jewish pogroms,
descriptions made by eyewitnesses, produce a terrifying impression, to
such a point that it is impossible to read them through in one sitting.
And as for those who had the misfortune to be the victims of a pogrom,
or to have witnessed one, they more often than not lost their reason. We
must add that precise, certified documentation concerning pogroms is
abundant, both in Russia and in other countries.
It was especially in the first years of the twentieth century, along
with the growth of popular discontent against the absolutist system,
that pogroms took on a certain periodicity and appeared in a virtual
series. These are the principal ones: Odessa in October 1905; Kiev,
October 1905; Tomsk, October 1905; Gomel, January 1906; Bialystok, June
1906; Kishinev, several pogroms in 1905 and 1906;. The victims of these
large-scale pogroms can be counted in the hundreds, sometimes in the
thousands. And aside from these large-scale pogroms there were dozens of
lesser importance. After 1906 the wave of pogroms fell as if by magic,
the government feeling itself to be more secure after having smashed the
revolution of 1905.
The revolution of 1917 and the fall of tsarism did not bring the
practice of pogroms to a complete end. Wherever counter-revolutionary
elements momentarily got the upper hand (the Petliura, Denikin, Wrangel,
and Gregoriev movements, among others) Jewish pogroms started up again,
on the orders of or at the very least under the benevolent eyes of the
leaders, who sought to in this way obtain popularity and to flatter the
unhealthy instincts of the masses they depended on.
Can we at least say that currently pogroms in Russia are nothing but
nightmares of the dark past and that they can never be revived? Alas,
no. This cannot be affirmed. At the risk of surprising certain readers
we must admit in all honesty that anti-Semitism still exists in Russia
and that pogroms are still very much to be feared in the future.
Modern Russian anti-Semitism, it is true, no longer has the same basis
or meaning as in the past. Its basis and meaning have become more vast,
more profound, and clearer. Its effects will be all the more disastrous.
It is no longer suggestions from above that nourish them, but rather
appreciations born and spread in the popular strata themselves. At the
current moment it is smoldering under the ashes. But it could break out
one day in a terrible explosion.
What is the appearance of the new anti-Semitism in the USSR?
Despite the contrary opinion of many people overseas who, momentarily
duped by the intense propaganda and the skillful mise en scène of the
Bolsheviks, are totally unaware of current Russian reality, the
Bolshevik regime is not stable. We affirm this categorically. A famous
phrase is attributed to Trotsky that he perhaps never said, but which,
independently of its author, depicts the true situation of the USSR.
Trotsky is supposed to have said, at the beginning of the Bolshevik
regime, responding to someone who doubted the solidity of the new
statist system: “300,000 nobles were able to govern this people for
three centuries. Why can’t 300,000 Bolsheviks do the same?” The analogy
between the two possibilities, the old and the new, perhaps surpasses
human thought: it is total. Current Russian reality is perfectly
expressed in it: a people oppressed by a privileged stratum which
maintains itself in power by any means necessary. People were right to
call tsarist Russia a “giant with feet of clay,” for the entire edifice
of the time had as its basis the oppression and enslavement of the
masses. History proved the truth of the expression: the giant collapsed.
But the new giant, the USSR, also has feet of clay, for like the other
one, it maintains itself by means of the oppression and enslavement of
the masses. It will thus also inevitably end up collapsing. And in the
current conditions it cannot possibly maintain itself, even as long a
quarter century.
And so the day when events in the USSR take an unfavorable turn for the
masters of the moment the people’s anger will inevitably fall on the
heads of the masters it will consider responsible for all the miseries
and failures of the revolution, and there are many Jews in the ranks of
the Russian Communist Party, particularly among its leaders. “We are
oppressed by foreigners and Jews:” this appreciation is current in the
USSR. It is thus possible that in the hurricane of the fight and in an
access of hatred the entire Jewish population will become the object of
the hatred of the unleashed mob. We can only hope that the working
masses will again find within themselves enough good sense, will, and
strength to not allow a salutary movement against the true oppressors
degenerate into a new Massacre of the Innocents.