History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3). Dubnow Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ a third element, which was foreign to the Poles no less than to the Jews—the local native population which was Russian by race and Greek Orthodox in religion, and was engaged principally in agriculture.

The vast region around the southern basin of the Dnieper, the whole territory comprising the provinces of Kiev, Poltava, and Chernigov, and including parts of Podolia and Volhynia, was subject to the political power of the Polish kings and the economic dominion of the Polish magnates. Enormous estates, comprising a large number of villages populated by Russian peasants, were here in the hands of wealthy Polish landlords, who enjoyed all the rights of feudal owners. The enthralled peasants, or khlops, as they were contemptuously nicknamed by the Polish nobles, were strange to their masters in point of religion and nationality. In the eyes of the Catholics, particularly in those of the clergy, the Greek Orthodox faith was a "religion of khlops," and they endeavored to eradicate it by forcing upon it compulsory church unions121 or by persecuting the "dissidents." The Poles looked upon the Russian populace as an inferior race, which belonged more to Asia than to Europe. In these circumstances, the economic struggle between the feudal landlord and his serfs, unmitigated by the feeling of common nationality and religion, was bound to assume acute forms. Apart from the oppressive agricultural labor, which the peasants had to give regularly and gratuitously to the landlord, they were burdened with a multitude of minor imposts and taxes, levied on pastures, mills, hives, etc. The Polish magnates lived, as a rule, far away from their Ukrainian possessions, leaving the management of the latter in the hands of stewards and arendars.

Among these rural arendars there were many Jews, who principally leased from the pans the right of "propination," or the sale of spirituous liquors. These leases had the effect of transferring to the Jews some of the powers over the Russian serfs which were wielded by the noble landowners. The Jewish arendar endeavored to derive as much profit from the nobleman's estate as the owner himself would have derived had he lived there. But under the prevailing conditions of serfdom these profits could be extracted only by a relentless exploitation of the peasants. Moreover, the contemptuous attitude of the Shlakhta and the Catholic clergy towards the "religion of khlops," and their endeavors to force the Greek Orthodox serfs into Catholicism, by imposing upon them an ecclesiastic union, gave a sharp religious coloring to this economic antagonism. The oppressed peasantry reacted to this treatment with ominous murmurings and agrarian disturbances in several places. The enslaved South Russian muzhik hated the Polish pan in his capacity as landlord, Catholic, and Lakh.122 No less intensely did he hate the Jewish arendar, with whom he came in daily contact, and whom he regarded both as a steward of the pan and an "infidel," entirely foreign to him on account of his religious customs and habits of life. Thus the Ukrainian Jew found himself between hammer and anvil: between the pan and the khlop, between the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox, between the Pole and the Russian. Three classes, three religions, and three nationalities, clashed on a soil which contained in its bowels terrible volcanic forces—and a catastrophe was bound to follow.

The South Russian population, though politically and agriculturally dependent upon the Poles, was far from being that patient "beast of burden" into which the rule of serfdom tried to transform it. Many circumstances combined to foster a warlike spirit in this population. The proximity of the New Russian steppes and the Khanate of the Crimea, whence hordes of Tatars often burst forth to swoop down like birds of prey upon the eastern provinces of Poland, compelled the inhabitants of the Ukraina to organize themselves into warlike companies, or Cossacks,123 to fight off the invaders. The Polish Government, acting through its local governors or starostas, encouraged the formation of these companies for the defense of the borders of the Empire. In this way Ukrainian Cossackdom, a semi-military, semi-agricultural caste, came into being, with an autonomous organization and its own hetman124 at the head.

Apart from the Ukrainian Cossacks, who were subject to the Polish Government, there were also the so-called Zaporozhian125 Cossacks, a completely independent military organization which lived beyond the Falls of the Dnieper, in the steppes of so-called New Russia, the present Governments of Yekaterinoslav and Kherson, and indulged in frequent raids upon the Turks and in constant warfare with the Tatars of the Crimea. This military camp, or syech,126 beyond the Falls of the Dnieper attracted many khlops from the Ukraina, who preferred a free, unrestricted military life to the dreary existence of laboring slaves. The syech represented a primitive military republic, where daring, pluck, and knightly exploits were valued above all. It was a semi-barbarous Tatar horde, except that it professed the Greek Orthodox faith, and was of Russian origin, though, by the way, with a considerable admixture of Mongolian blood. The Ukrainian and Zaporozhian Cossacks were in constant relations with each other. The peasants of the Ukraina looked up with pride and hope to this their national guard, which sooner or later was bound to free them from the rule of the Poles and Jews. The Polish Government failed to perceive that on the eastern borders of the Empire a mass of explosives was constantly accumulating, which threatened to wreck the whole Polish Republic.

      Nor could the Jews foresee that this terrible force would be directed against them, and would stain with blood many pages of their history, serving as a terrible omen for the future. The first warning was sounded in 1637, when the Cossack leader Pavluk suddenly appeared from beyond the Falls in the province of Poltava, inciting the peasants to rise against the pans and the Jews. The rebels demolished several synagogues in the town of Lubny and in neighboring places, and killed about two hundred Jews. The real catastrophe, however, came ten years later. The mutiny of the Cossacks and the Ukrainian peasants in 1648 inaugurates in the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe the era of pogroms, which Southern Russia bequeathed to future generations down to the beginning of the twentieth century.

      2. The Pogroms and Massacres of 1648–1649

In the spring of 1648, while King Vladislav IV. still sat on the throne of Poland, one of the popular Cossack leaders, Bogdan Khmelnitzki, from the town of Chigirin, in the province of Kiev, unfurled the banner of rebellion in the Ukraina and in the region beyond the Dnieper Falls. Infuriated by the conduct of the Polish authorities of his native place,127 Khmelnitzki began to incite the Ukrainian Cossacks to armed resistance. They elected him secretly their hetman, and empowered him to conduct negotiations with the Zaporozhians. Having arrived in the region beyond the Dnieper Falls, he organized military companies, and concluded an alliance with the Khan of the Crimea, who entered into a compact to send large troops of Tatars to the aid of the rebels.

      In April, 1648, the combined hosts of the Cossacks and Tatars moved from beyond the Falls of the Dnieper to the borders of the Ukraina. In the neighborhood of the Yellow Waters and Korsun they inflicted a severe defeat on the Polish army under the command of Pototzki and Kalinovski (May 6–15), and this defeat served as a signal for the whole region on the eastern banks of the Dnieper to rise in rebellion. The Russian peasants and town dwellers left their homes, and, organizing themselves into bands, devastated the estates of the pans, slaying their owners as well as the stewards and Jewish arendars. In the towns of Pereyaslav, Piryatin, Lokhvitz, Lubny, and the surrounding country, thousands of Jews were barbarously killed, and their property was either destroyed or pillaged. The rebels allowed only those to survive who embraced the Greek Orthodox faith. The Jews of several cities of the Kiev region, in order to escape from the hands of the Cossacks, fled into the camp of the Tatars, and gave themselves up voluntarily as prisoners of war. They knew that the Tatars refrained as a rule from killing them, and transported them instead into Turkey, where they were sold as slaves, and had a chance of being ransomed by their Turkish coreligionists.

      At that juncture, in the month of May, King Vladislav IV. died, and an interregnum ensued, which, marked by political СКАЧАТЬ