Time to read: 21 minutes(s)

"Pogrom," as we know, is one of the Russian words that has entered the global lexicon. Before the Revolution, one of the most notorious and horrific pogroms occurred in the university town of Tomsk. In 1905, a religious procession in honor of the tsar and the state degenerated into mass murder. "Jews and students" were beaten. Dozens of citizens died, and many were maimed. A fire started by the crowd destroyed the city theater and the Siberian Railway administration building.

We spoke with Tomsk journalist Sergei Maltsev, author of the book “Pogrom,” the first part of which, about what preceded this pogrom and whether the participants in the pogrom and government officials were punished. came out in May 2022 of the year.

Tomsk is a city with a rich history. Why did you decide to write about the pogrom?

— It's very simple. In 2020, like any journalist who specializes in local history, I was looking for anniversary dates for a good longread. It just so happened to be the 115th anniversary of the pogrom. I started collecting material and even wrote a text, but I couldn't find a place for it. Ultimately, we didn't manage to complete it in 2020, and by 2021, it was no longer relevant. But the topic resonated with me. It resonated with me because it made me perceive Tomsk differently. We're accustomed to all these stereotypes about Tomsk being the intellectual capital of Siberia, a university town. And the fact that this city, among other things, was a city with a conservative majority was a new idea for me. I became interested in uncovering the nature of the uprising, its details. However, there was already a book about the pogrom by historian Mikhail Shilovsky. Adding something fundamentally new in this regard was difficult. I decided to write a fictional book.

— How did Jews live in Tomsk, what did they do?

"Pogrom" contains epigraphs—excerpts from newspapers and the essay "The Jews of Siberia," from which one can draw one simple conclusion: the Jews of Siberia, unlike those in central Russia and the southern regions of the empire, weren't very different from the rest of the population in everyday life. Neither a distinctive dialect nor a specific occupation. They were assimilated. This happened precisely because Siberia at the end of the 19th century, before and after the gold rush, turned into a melting pot. Like North America. It was a melting pot of nations. Naturally, due to cultural and religious specificity, few Jews were engaged in agriculture. Their sphere was trade and crafts. Both big and small capital. And even the cabbies were Jews. There were no Jewish neighborhoods in Tomsk; they were dispersed.

—Have there been anti-Semitic conflicts in Tomsk province before? How were they resolved?

Anti-Semitic conflicts were present. We've known about everyday anti-Semitism since the early Middle Ages. The Russian Empire was no exception. But they weren't documented. The only thing that exists is a police report from 1901 about someone engaging in anti-Semitic conversations at the city market. Moreover, in 1905, Tomsk didn't even have a full-fledged Black Hundreds organization. And by then, they were formed by order from above. A similar order came to Tomsk, and activists—nowadays they'd be called right-wing radicals—created such an organization. But there were only about 15 of them.

I don't mention this in my novel, but in August 1905, about a month after their formation, the Black Hundreds wrote to Tomsk Metropolitan Makarii, asking that clergy also join the organization. Because they were Russian, Orthodox, and so on. Makarii responded that they prayed for the Tsar daily, preached sermons on patriotism, helped the front with both word and deed, and that it was not proper for a priest to participate in secular gatherings. And I don't give them my blessing. The Black Hundreds were aliens here. There are memoirs by the last director of the Imperial Theaters, Vladimir Telyakovsky, who wrote about the former Moscow Opera artist Matchinsky, who was forced to flee Tomsk because of the predominance of Jews in the Tomsk theater. But that wasn't true; that was simply the way the man saw the world.

"Today, during a reception, I had a visit from a former Moscow Opera artist named Matchinsky. He spent two years in Tomsk and told me that the Musical Society there is in Jewish hands. In general, Jews are increasingly gaining influence in the musical world, and fighting them is extremely difficult. He described the residents of Tomsk as very liberal. When Matchinsky sent a telegram congratulating the Heir to the throne, they told him he was being futile in his efforts to please the government and that there was no point in congratulating them. Ultimately, he even had to flee the Russian Musical Society due to his views clashing with theirs." (from the memoirs of Vladimir Telyakovsky – editor's noteL.).

At the same time, Jews, like other nationalities, were present in all spheres of life in Tomsk. So were Poles, Germans, Swedes, and French. Since the arrival of prisoners of war in the 17th century, various peoples have lived in Tomsk. At one point, the Tomsk governor was the grandson of a captured Swede—a Swede captured at Poltava.

Of course, Jews were prominent in Tomsk. One of the most notable figures was Ilya Fuksman, a very wealthy man and one of Tomsk's leading money men. Zakhary Tsibulsky was one of the initiators of the founding of the university in Tomsk. He also partially invested his capital in this project. In other words, Jews were quite influential. And this was a pan-Siberian story.

— Why did it flare up so much in university Tomsk?

In Tomsk, the university was a place that conservative society perceived as a foreign body. And in 1905, Tomsk not only had a university, but also a technological institute that had been operating for a year. This dramatically increased the number of students and professors in the city. So, in a short time, many educational institutions sprang up, and that Tomsk peculiarity of having one in five students was born then. Students were the people of the future. People who saw the future in progress, in scientific and technological revolution. In social revolution. And they encountered those who had lived in Tomsk for quite some time, the conservative majority. Specifically, its uneducated part.

  Are the instigators and instigators of the pogrom known?

"There were no instigators or ringleaders of the pogrom, as was later portrayed in Soviet history. Governor Vsevolod Azanchevsky-Azancheev and Metropolitan Makarii were named as the instigators. Moreover, this version appeared in the 1930s. Before that, there was no hint of instigators in witness testimony. It was truly a popular, spontaneous wave."

The pogrom took place in October 1905, and all the events preceding it began on January 18, 1905, with the first demonstration in support of the victims of Bloody Sunday. It, too, was not without bloodshed. The victims were Iosif Kononov and Ilyusha Efimov. Kononov was 19 years old, and Efimov was 9. In the public eye, it was "they shot at children." Although that wasn't the case. The Social Democrats had an armed militia at the demonstration, and they were the first to open fire, judging by witness accounts. Whether this was a provocation or someone's nerves gave out is difficult to say. But blood was spilled. This became the trigger for further revolutionary action in the city. Strikes and rallies ensued. And the students of the Polytechnic Institute weren't just striking. They gathered outside the Polytechnic building and marched through the city. And not in a single demonstration, but in groups. They reach the shops, stores, workshops, and factories, and everywhere they pull workers off their jobs and force them to strike. Railroad workers join the strike, and as a result, freight is stopped from entering the city. This is bad for small businesses. By the end of the year, pharmacists and barbers began striking. Naturally, the entire economic life of the city came to a standstill. There is no income, and children are crying out for food and water. All this led to the entire conservative mass—petty traders, clerks, and draymen—saying, "To hell with this revolution. We want things to be like the day before yesterday." We lived peacefully, traded, and made money. We sent our children to study in better climates, and everyone was happy.

It's clear that the uneducated and conservative part of society needs some kind of explanation. And this is where the anti-Semitic theme comes in. The university is seen as a Jewish pastime and ploy. Plus, there are rumors shared by all those who participated in the religious procession. I took them from police reports and court testimony, and they appear in the second part of the book. They say Martha was in an epileptic fit at the market, screaming that the last days were coming, that the Antichrist would come from the university. The rumors were the most absurd. That the revolution was being staged to overthrow the tsar and the governor and install a Jewish committee, called parliament, over all of this. Install it so that they could continue to rule us all. In their own Jewish way. To take away our trade, our businesses, and so on. They also said that the workers' strike was staged to prevent soldiers from returning from the front and defending the empire and the sovereign. Specifically, in Tomsk. But the rumors had no single source, and their extreme absurdity suggests they were a popular conspiracy theory, devoid of even the slightest pseudoscientific basis. It all arose from the people's fatigue with revolutionary action. And precisely because they were ungovernable, uncontrolled, and uninstigated, they acted like a mob.

"At 8 a.m. on October 20, groups of workers and small traders began to gather again in Cathedral Square and near the city police headquarters. Cries were heard from their midst that Jews, Poles, students, railway employees, and strikers must be beaten. <…> Furthermore, the crowd took a portrait from the town council building and, seizing two national flags, marched along Market Square toward Post Office Street, singing the national anthem and shouting "Hurrah!", with some of the crowd carrying sticks. At the beginning of Post Office Street, people began to gather in separate groups, and as the demonstrators approached, cries of "Who's for the Tsar?" "This is the end for the students!" "Let's go beat up the Jews and students!" were heard." From the trial transcript of the pogromists.

— So there were no organizers?

"No. They gathered at the town council, which, as they would say today, was responsible for governing the middle class. The council handled everyday and economic issues. For example, it ensured that people cleaned up around their shops, and so on. So, the people there initially gathered for a religious procession to Trinity Cathedral and wanted to ask Metropolitan Macarius for a blessing. They asked the head of the town council to ask the metropolitan for this. The head refused, saying, 'If you want to go on a religious procession, look, we have freedom now—go ahead.' They took a portrait of the Tsar and icons of the Mother of God from the council and went on a religious procession to "soften hearts." Peacefully, with singing. Nothing foreshadowed it, as they say. The slogans were: 'Good for the revolution, good for the strike, give us peace and quiet.' Everything would have been fine, but they reached the City Duma building and wanted to take another portrait of the Tsar. The City Duma was then in session, led by the doctor Alexei Makushin, and they were turned away. It should be noted that the Duma at the time was guarded by a newly formed student security force; there was no police. And here's why: the day before, on October 16, police and Cossacks had beaten students and lawyers on Solyanaya Square. Students from the commercial school had gone on strike, and Police Chief Nikolsky personally arrived with a mounted Cossack detachment and a detachment of foot police to calm them down. But the students wouldn't calm down. The police chief lost his nerve and gave the order to beat them if they wouldn't disperse. The mounted Cossacks beat the students with whips, and lawyers saw them from the courthouse and ran to defend the students. They began to unhorse the Cossacks, taking their whips, and then Nikolsky gave the command, "Beat the judges." A huge brawl ensued, and as a result, the provincial judge, also a member of the liberal establishment, issued a stern statement declaring the actions of the police and Cossacks unlawful. And from October 18th onward, the police were effectively no longer active in the city. Therefore, the police did nothing during the pogrom, and the army was only brought in the following day, October 21st, to calm the rioters. And so, returning to what was said, armed students were guarding the Duma. According to many accounts, the crowd did not want to leave the Duma, demanding a portrait of the emperor. A student guard told them that no one would give them anything. An altercation ensued. Someone in the crowd threw a stone through a window, and the student fired. And indeed, someone was wounded. This triggered the pogrom. People quickly dismantled the fences of nearby private houses. Further events took place on the Novosobornaya square in Tomsk.

— That is, they went on a religious procession, but started beating Jews.

"It wasn't just Jews who were beaten. The typical pogrom victim was a young man dressed like a student or an educated person. Wearing a coat and glasses. Or an engineer's jacket. And if he had dark hair, glasses, and a prominent nose, it's best for him to stay out of sight. The newspaper "Sibirskaya Zhizn" has a partial list of victims, including those who reported beatings, but Jews aren't the majority. People with income and decent clothes also fell victim. The approximate number of victims, according to various sources, ranges from 124 to 240. These are the people killed."

"The crowd began pursuing students and other individuals on the street who seemed suspicious to the crowd. As they caught up with the latter, the crowd beat them. A young man in a gray uniform coat, who had previously fled the crowd into the courtyard of the City Council, was beaten, and he died after being beaten. The crowd of demonstrators then proceeded along Pochtamtskaya Street, continuing to beat anyone they encountered. Seeing Yaripelsky, an insurance agent, at the gates of Orlova's house, some of the demonstrators attacked him and killed him with several blows of their sticks. They then searched his pockets and stole his wallet and notebook," according to the court transcript.  

— Were there women among the victims?

"Yes, they were just there to watch. A rally was taking place at the Korolev Theatre, which was located near Novosobornaya Square, where the crowd had headed. It was to discuss the October 17th Manifesto, with which Nicholas II granted the country a constitution. Women also attended the rally, and they played a significant role in the revolutionary actions."The crowd burned down the theater where the rally was taking place, as well as the adjacent Siberian Railway building. These fires accounted for the large number of casualties. Ed.).

“Having arrived at the square, one part of the crowd, carrying portraits of the Emperor, turned towards the cathedral, while the other part walked through the square to Moskovsky Trakt Street, where people were standing near the building of the Siberian Railway Traction Service Administration and the Korolev Theatre. Since a rally was scheduled to take place at the Queen's Theatre, after the demonstrators left the city council, it was decided to send the newly formed militia to the theatre. <…> When the police were walking through the square, some of the crowd near the cathedral initially mistook them for a Red Cross detachment and waved their hats at them. <..> The policemen, having reached the turnoff to the Moscow Highway, lined up near the railway administration building and fired a volley of revolvers into the crowd. According to other witnesses, the crowd began to advance on the police officers, blocking their path to the theater; then many of the crowd, armed with stakes, sticks, and revolvers, attacked the police officers and began beating some of them. They, defending themselves, were forced to fire a few shots into the crowd. After the police opened fire on the crowd, 5-6 people were hit, and the crowd started to run.  <…> Then the crowd rushed towards the police officers again, and they entered through the main entrance to the administration building. At this time, there were 300-400 people in the administration, most of whom were employees who had come to receive their salaries, as well as outsiders. The crowd began to break glass in the administration building and break into its lower floor, as a result of which both the front and back entrances were barricaded by police officers, and all the people who had been in the administration moved to the second floor. At the same time, the crowd broke into Reichseligmann's beer hall, located on the ground floor of the same building, and began to wreak havoc. Having also entered the premises of the Queen's Theatre, the crowd smashed and destroyed all the furnishings. Troops were moved towards the aforementioned buildings and cordoned them off. However, the raging crowd continued to cause destruction and mixed with the companies of soldiers standing nearby. Growing in number, the crowd of people gathered in the square reached several thousand people. Then the garrison commander, Major General Riesenkampf, suggested that the besieged surrender their weapons and leave the building under the protection of troops. After the negotiations, some of the besieged came out into the square, including the architect Tatarczuk, engineers Kleonov, Schwartz and others. But as soon as they passed the lines of troops, the crowd standing behind them began to beat and rob them, and engineer Schwartz was killed. Since the rest of the besieged refused to leave the building, the garrison officers came to them several more times with various officials and persuaded them, mainly women, to leave the building under the protection of soldiers. However, the besieged refused to accept the offer, citing the fact that the troops had not protected those who had come out into the square. While these negotiations were taking place, the crowd continued beatings, and in many places in the square there were wounded and dead people lying, who, in addition, were being robbed by the crowd: they were stripped of their clothes and shoes, money and belongings. <….> People demanded that the governor hand over to them the mayor Makushin, doctors Bronner and Bereznitsky, and attorneys Vologodsky and Weisman.  When the governor stated that these people would be brought to trial and imprisoned, the crowd objected that they wanted the death of the guilty, not a trial, and that no one would be released from the administration building. Meanwhile, part of the crowd that was near the Queen's Theatre and the Reichseligmann pub built a fire from firewood and the remains of furniture and lit it, after which many of the crowd began to take burning firewood from the fire and ran with it into the pub and theatre. At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon the beer hall caught fire, and soon the theatre also caught fire. <…> Out of fear of being burned, some of those in the burnt building rushed to the barricaded entrance doors and, having dismantled the barriers, began to run out into the square and into the courtyard that faced the Queen’s Theatre. And here those seeking refuge from the fire were subjected to beatings by the crowd. Others jumped out of second-story windows or climbed down drainpipes, but those who escaped were shot at and then attacked and beaten by the crowd. Meanwhile, the 3rd floor also caught fire, and soon the entire building was engulfed in flames. The building of the Queen's Theatre was also on fire. “The fire brigades that arrived at the square were unable to begin extinguishing the burning buildings, as the crowd would not let them in, and so they limited themselves to defending the neighboring buildings and thus preventing the fire from spreading,” according to the court transcript.  

— What was the position of the city and provincial authorities at the time of the pogrom and immediately after?

The city government was divided into a bourgeois council and a city council. The bourgeois council was mentally on the side of the pogromists. The city council was almost liberal, while the non-liberals represented big business. Big business is still inclined to a bourgeois-democratic worldview. As for the provincial government, it's a different story. Governor Azanchesky-Azancheyev arrived in Tomsk only in April 1905. This was his first government position; before that, he had been an idle landowner. He was inactive, but Soviet history interpreted his inaction as approval. My purely personal opinion is that he simply didn't know what to do. This is also demonstrated by the story of the staff captain of the Tiflis battalion, which was attached to the Tomsk regiment. The commander of this battalion was Staff Captain Osepyants. He was on the square with his battalion, and when he saw what was happening, he ran to the governor. And as Osepyants family legend has it, he said to the governor, "You see what's going on, give me the order, and I'll restore order with my soldiers." The governor replied that we were free now, and I didn't have that authority. Osepyants grabbed his pistol and, shaking it under the governor's nose, said, "Oh, freedom, then give me that authority." But he never received the order. He began restoring order anyway, but one battalion wasn't enough. After the pogrom, the governor filed a complaint against him, and Osepyants was sent back to Tiflis with his battalion. But this complaint was followed by a letter signed by respected people of Tomsk, stating that Staff Captain Osepyants had led like a hero. And instead of demoting him, he was awarded a decoration.

Metropolitan Makarii can also be counted among the provincial authorities; he also took a neutral stance. He did not bless the pogromists, but he was repeatedly asked to speak with them and tell them that this was unchristian. But he did not do this either.

“He had to observe many scenes of beatings of people that evening and the last part of the day. He also witnessed how a crowd of black people, sensing freedom, smashed glass with poles and stones, breaking frames in the building of the Siberian Railway administration. Soldiers were standing near the building at the time, but their presence did little to hinder the actions of the crowd. People were also being beaten. “Thus,” says the witness, “the pogrom took place before the eyes of the troops and the commanding officers.” The witness had to witness the following scene. Several people were beating a student. The governor just approached the scene of this massacre. The witness turned to him, saying that it was necessary to save a human life. The governor of the province paid no attention to his words and in a tone that sounded both annoyed at something and a feeling of disgust, without even looking in the direction of the man who had just been beaten, said: “Policeman, take him and send him to prison.” The half-dead student was taken away. Another witness may have witnessed the governor's conversation with members of the crowd. Among these "representatives" of the crowd was a woman with significant traces of blood on her apron. "Mother, why are you here?" the governor asked her. "Out of loyalty to the Tsar and the Fatherland," was the reply. "Commendable," Mr. Azancheyev—Azanchevsky—approved, according to the witness's testimony. 

How long did the pogrom last?

"The main events ended on October 24th. Four days. But in the Siberian Life newspaper of June 1911, there's this line: students are strolling peacefully through the city, and no one's beating them anymore. There were still outbreaks of violence for six years afterward."

— How were the participants in the Tomsk pogrom punished, and were they punished at all?

"Only those against whom there was specific evidence of damage, beatings, and murder were punished. As well as those involved in robberies and raids. The overwhelming majority received rather lenient punishments—under the statute for all pogroms—organizing mass riots."from one month to two years of administrative arrest in prison, only one civil claim was satisfied for three thousand rubles – editor's note.). Incidentally, the synagogues weren't destroyed because the BUND, a Jewish youth social democratic organization, had taken them under its protection. They were all part of the city guard and were armed. The weapons are a different story. The fact that the pogromists didn't have any weapons was a coincidence. Because a month before, Tomsk merchant Ekaterina Nekrasova had been selling revolvers and revolvers for 4 to 6 rubles.

— Were there any repressions against city leadership? Individual police officers?

The governor was dismissed, and Police Chief Nikolsky was demoted. Nikolsky is a different story altogether. He only did clerical work; he had no police experience whatsoever. But in 1904, the legendary Tomsk Sherlock Holmes—Pyotr Arshaulov, Police Chief—died of pneumonia. Arshaulov became famous for organizing floods and fires. The police handled everything back then. Everyone agrees that if Arshaulov had lived, the tragedy of January 18th would not have happened. Because he organized everything differently. He would have allowed the protesters to pass. There would have been no clashes between the police and the lawyers.

— What role did political struggle play in the outbreak of the pogrom?

"There's no Bolshevik trace in the pogrom itself. It was a surprise to them. The workers themselves organized to resist the pogromists. Yes, the Bolsheviks made great efforts to make the situation critical for the conservative part of society. The bosses are being treated like crap, they're not allowed to work, business is stalled. But the Bolsheviks appear in my book only because of the subsequent historical context. If the Socialist Revolutionaries had won in 1917 and treated the Bolsheviks the way the Bolsheviks later treated the Socialist Revolutionaries, I would have written about the Socialist Revolutionary Party. But in Tomsk, the Socialist Revolutionaries were former members of the Narodnaya Volya (Narodnaya Volya), exiles. The Socialist Revolutionaries were more inclined to debate and agitation than to organize strikes and industrial action."

— What documents did you refer to while writing the book?

"I used Shilovsky's book. I read testimonies, including those published during the Soviet period. And the published court report. But I used them to convey the spirit of the times. To do this, I read a lot of correspondence, diary entries, police reports from those years, and newspapers. All these books were not just about facts, but about the spirit of the times."

— Only the first part of the book has been published; the second one isn't out yet. Why?

— The second part didn't come out because I submitted the manuscript at the end of January 2022. The book was laid out fairly quickly. And then something happened, and literally in three days the price of paper and stitching thread went up. And the question arose: either we print the book in lower quality, but in its entirety. Or we print it in good quality, but only half. But we couldn't do that with the important artist who designed the cover for the second part. We decided to print only half. But then things got even worse. And we'll probably have to launch...crowdfunding campaign for publishing a book.

Are the recent pogrom in Dagestan and the Tomsk pogrom similar in any way?

— Moral panic. And displaced aggression. After all, the pogromists of 1905 took out their aggression on Jews, students, professors, and educated people. On those who were different from them. But in reality, they were angry at the war, at the Tsar. The Russo-Japanese War was of no use to anyone. It exhausted the country, exhausted the budget. But nothing could be done about the war and the Tsar. The same thing happened in Dagestan: someone, out of panic, suppressed information. And so it began.