Self-Defense and the Jewish Refugee Question
The Civil War pogroms claimed tens – if not hundreds – of Jewish lives throughout Ukraine and uprooted at least as many Jews. The refugees displaced by anti-Jewish violence often sought refuge in shtetls, which had powerful Jewish self-defense units. Thus, on the one hand self-defense units influenced internal migration patterns by attracting and harboring refugees. On the other, however, self-defense units also assisted refugees to form self-defense units of their own and return to and rebuild their home shtetls. Both of these auxiliary activities provided a source of legitimacy for self-defense units at a time could draw increasingly less on the main wellspring for the justification of their existence – pogroms and “banditism.”
In this two-part post, I will first discuss how localities with self-defense groups turned into refugee centers and refugees into a source of legitimacy for the units’ existence, while the second part will showcase the formation of self-defense units from refugees and the effective reconquest and rebuilding of refugees’ home shtetls.
Boguslav: Flight and Fight
In September 1921, the journal of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Jewish Department published an article on Jewish refugees, based on data from the Kiev District Committee of the Social Committee for the Relief of Victims of Pogroms (Evobshchestkom). According to Evobshchestkom data, even over two years after the bloodiest pogroms 4,685 refugees from 72 localities were still concentrated in Boguslav, a mid-size town, which served as the center of the Jewish self-defense network in Ukraine.[1] A year later, the Evobshchestkom devoted an entire statistical monograph to the refugees of Boguslav, complete with 43 tables and 15 diagrams in Yiddish, Russian, and French.[2]
Although the claim voiced by the Boguslav Jewish self-defense unit’s commander in his memoirs that the population of Boguslav at times grew to a hundred thousand souls due to the flood of refugees is likely exaggerated, this town did indeed, for several years, serve as a key destination for refugees fleeing pogroms.[3] In August 1919, a representative of the Commissariat for Social Welfare reported that Boguslav had 20,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were Jews, including numerous refugees languishing amidst appalling material and sanitary conditions.[4] Due to the horrendous Denikinist pogroms in the summer of 1919, pogroms in nearby shtetls in the fall, and the Polish invasion in early 1920, the flood of refugees increased exponentially.[5] By the fall of 1920, the Evobshchestkom reported exorbitant numbers: in October, reportedly about 10,000 refugees – including 3000 children, of whom 1500 were full orphans – were concentrated in Boguslav. On a single September day, 2000 Jews were reported to have fled to Boguslav from Stepantsy, after an ataman threatened to exterminate them. Jews were flocking to Boguslav from far and wide, including from Kiev, Kanev, Tarashcha, Zvenigorodka, Skvira, and Cherkassy uezds.[6]
According to the head of the Boguslav Jewish self-defense, the unit often dispatched detachments to escort incoming refugees to Boguslav under arms. Meanwhile, the self-defense command worked to set up housing units and soup kitchens for the refugees in the town and self-defense members collected food and clothing for them.[7] As a Evobshchestkom representative reported in November 1920:
[E]ntire shtetls, leaving all what is theirs to the whims of fate, fled from the hands of bandits and ran to Boguslav, seeing here the only defense of their lives thanks to the guard (…) In Boguslav there is not one house without 10-15 refugees quartered in it, and they all consider themselves lucky, since they are in Boguslav, and the Boguslav guard had managed to prove itself before the authorities and inhabitants as a combat unit that has decided to [rather] die with weapon in hand, but not surrender to humiliation by bands, and it managed to fight bandits according to the orders of the authorities under Gorodishche, Tagancha, Korsun’, and Potoki – and in all these cases emerged triumphant, since the guardsman cannot withdraw: he either dies, or accomplishes his mission. In all the places where there were so many Jewish victims, it was because there was no Jewish guard.[8]
In February 1921, a plenipotentiary of the Social Welfare Commissariat’s Kiev Guberniia branch penned a detailed report on refugees that is worth quoting at length:
For the shtetl Jewish population it became clear that by remaining in place it was doomed to certain death, and the evacuation of shtetls began. Leaving to the whims of the fate all their livelihood, dragging after them the elderly and the children – mostly on foot – these hapless [Jews] set out to larger, safer places where the eye looks, as they said. Such a large wave of refugees was hard to deal with even for such a large guberniia center as Kiev. Not to mention the uezd cities. But not all shtetls began to evacuate. There also were places (more or less significant ones) that decided to defend their right to exist with weapon in hand, organizing guards with the permission of the local authorities. Remaining in their places, they in turn became centers to where refugees fled from the surrounding pogrom-stricken localities, and in this way made great services to the large centers: they for a time retained the pouring enormous crowd of refugees. One of the most important such locality is Boguslav, in Kanev uezd, where I for a time happened to work in helping the pogrom-stricken gathered there. (…) And thanks to the great safety of Boguslav, it became a center of gathering and refuge for the Jewish refugees from the surrounding minor localities. It provided refuge for hundreds of dispossessed families from the nearby Jewish pogrom-stricken places of Kanev uezd, an enormous mass of refugees gathered there.[9]
Map of Kiev Guberniia
Jewish Refugees: Policies and Politics
Soviet Jewish authorities viewed the Jewish refugee question not only through the lens of relief, but also as a security and political threat. They feared that the stream of Jewish refugees would undermine in the eyes of the world any Soviet efforts to appear as defenders of the Jews and as a force in control of the fledgling state. As the Main Bureau of the Jewish Section of the Communist Party (Evsektsiia) put it, “allowing through the border a multi-thousand-strong Jewish mass, refugees and pogrom-stricken (…) means providing Zionists and other bourgeois organizations – which are conducting a broad campaign to help refugees from Soviet Russia – with a basis for dirty slander for the deceitful radios in America, England etc.”[10] Soviet authorities, however, were more inclined to allow Jewish emigration, as the prospect of thousands upon thousands of pogrom survivors flocking to urban centers already undergoing deep crises were the cause of a greater worry.[11] This concern, in turn, allowed self-defense units to accentuate their role in managing the refugee crisis and thereby legitimize their existence in the eyes of Soviet authorities.
Jewish parties also realized the association between the question of refugees and self-defense, and their approaches showed marked differences, in conformity with their general political lines. In mid-1921, Moishe Rekis-Mozin – a leader of the Jewish Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party (Poalei Zion) who was adamant to bring self-defense units to the party’s orbit – warned his comrades not to forget that “self-defense is the only [organization] in which the shtetl masses that do not plan to emigrate have hope. It is their only anchor of salvation, their only guarantee of life.”[12] In May 1921, the leftist offshoot of the Poalei Zion, the Jewish Communist Party (EKP), sent the Evsektsiia an all-encompassing plan to stem the tide of migration. In line with its more internationalist-oriented principles, the party proposed setting up “proletarian self-defense (…) to guarantee the security of the lives of hundreds and thousands of Jews subjected to the constant threat of nightmarish pogroms, accompanied by the criminal extermination of entire localities.” Combined with the proposed economic measures, the EKP expressed hope that such self-defense units would provide “Jewish laboring masses a real opportunity to affirm themselves on new economic positions and be convinced in reality that the maximum opportunities for laboring Jewry are open not beyond the borders of Soviet Ukraine, but within it, and thereby the migratory psychology of fleeing from the Soviet Republic would be liquidated.” Despite the suggestion that self-defense units be “proletarian,” rather than Jewish, and notwithstanding the EKP’s stated aim of preventing Jews from emigrating and thereby becoming tools of Western propaganda, the Evsektsiia still considered the EKP’s plan all too nationalist and rejected it outright.[13]
At the same time, Soviet Jewish institutions were lagging behind with acquiring substantial information about and formulating policies on either refugees or self-defense. In June 1921, the Jewish Department of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine’s Main Bureau held a session with the participation of representatives from across Ukraine. Although the two main topics on the agenda were self-defense and emigration, the attendees were forced to conclude they did not have enough information on either topic.[14]
In August 1921, at the 4th All-Republic Evsektsiia Congress Zlata Litvakova – the sister of the all-powerful Moscow Evsektsiia leader Moishe Litvakov and a tenacious party worker –[15] decried that due to the lack of Soviet Jewish organs in Ukraine the Main Bureau was left alone to deal with emigration and self-defense.[16] At the same Congress, the two major proposals of Evsekstsiia Central Committee member Abram Merezhin’s theses also dealt with self-defense and emigration. On the one hand Merezhin rejected the formation or continued existence of any Jewish armed units, arguing that instead Jews should join the Red Army. Concomitantly, he declared that it was the duty of the Evsektsiia in particular and of Communists in general to “fight those nationalistic and petty bourgeois tendencies that sow disbelief among the Jewish masses in the constructive forces of the Soviet Republics, criminally exploiting the pogroms (…) as evidence for the inability of the proletariat to do away with nationalist oppression.”[17]
Refugees as a Source of Legitimacy
Ever since the beginning of the bloodiest pogroms in 1919, the migration patterns of Jews to mid-sized towns were to a certain extent defined by the presence of self-defense units in such urban centers. In mid-1919, Golovanevsk was described as a “solid rock (…) a brilliant oasis in the desert of self-defense,” and became home to 2000 refugees.[18] Along with Boguslav, towards the end of 1920 the self-defense centers of Tarashcha and Shpola emerged as focal points in the internal migration of pogrom survivors. Both towns reportedly hosted thousands of refugees, and in Tarashcha’s case this prompted the Kiev Evobshchestkom Presidium to ask the Kiev Guberniia Revolutionary Committee not to disarm the local self-defense unit.[19] By February 1921, Zlatopol’ and Cherkassy joined the row of the most significant refugee destinations with self-defense units.[20]
Well aware of Soviet authorities’ concerns regarding internal migration and Jewish emigration, self-defense units began to turn these into their own favor, using the refugee question as a stick with which they could beat authorities reluctant to ensure their legal existence or provide material support. The most momentous and coordinated lobbying efforts transpired in mid-1921, when – for the first time since their legalization in February – self-defense units were threatened with disbanding by Soviet authorities. Leading the charge against the disbanding attempts was the shtetl Shenderovka, which on May 29 presented a petition with 150 signatures to the Standing Convention for Combating Banditism (Postoiannoe soveshchane po bor’be s banditizmom, PSBB), the main Soviet organ involved in regulating Jewish self-defense units. The petition declared that in case the self-defense is disarmed, the entire Jewish population would leave.[21]
On May 31, a general gathering of Tarashcha Jews and refugees in the town collected 295 signatories demanding that in case the self-defense unit is disbanded they be provided with a destination to where they can evacuate the entire Jewish population, as well as with the funds required to carry out the operation.[22] The next day, a similar petition in Shpola gathered 279 signatures. Noting that the town served as a refuge for refugees, the petition warned that “the day of the disarming of the self-defense will be the day of our mass flight from Shpola.”[23] On June 2, it was Rakitno Jews who gathered 340 signatures, intimating that “the disarming of our self-defense will lead to the panicky flight of the entire Jewish population, throwing to the whims of fate their last belongings, fleeing where their eyes can see, whereby they strengthen the raging wave of mass emigration.”[24] Lastly, on June 3, Boguslav Jews amassed approximately 1000-1300 signatures to their petition threatening mass flight in case of disarmament.[25] To drive the point home, on June 6, 1921 the representatives of eight self-defense units in Kiev Guberniia wrote directly to Khristian Rakovskii, the chairman of both the PSBB and of the Council of People's Commissars, the main executive organ of Soviet Ukraine The self-defense units cautioned that disbanding them would result in a flood of refugees to cities, causing shortages and epidemics.[26]
In Chernigov Guberniia, the plenipotentiary of the two major units – Snovsk and Gorodnia – also warned in a report in July that – were they disbanded – “the Jewish laboring population” would flee to the cities, which were in any case experiencing a sharp housing, food, and fuel crisis. Depicting a disturbing image of countless barefoot, unclothed refugees spreading epidemics in urban areas and burdening the state with demands for welfare provisions, the plenipotentiary concluded that doing away with the units would result in an outright catastrophe.[27] Similarly, when threatened with disbanding in August, the major units of Kremenchug Guberniia wrote to the Revolutionary Military Council of the Kiev Military District, pointing out that the decision would have grave consequences, forcing the Jewish population to flee to big cities, and hindering the reevacuation of refugees from the areas near the Romanian border.[28] As we shall see, the topic of reevacuation – returning pogrom refugees to their home shtetls – came to emerge as a key endeavor on the part of self-defense units in the period when the threat of pogroms began to wane.
A mounted detachment of the Boguslav self-defense unit [29]
Notes
[1] Z. Mindlin, “Bezhentsy, pogromlennye, zhivushchie v Umani i Boguslave Kievskoi gub,” Vestnik Evotdela Narkomnatsa 4 (September 1921): 24, 28 [Refugees and Pogrom-Stricken Living in Uman’ and Boguslav, Kiev Guberniia].
[2] “Bibliografiia,” Zhizn’ natsional’nostei 15 (150) (July 7, 1922): 16 [Bibliography].
[3] Aharon Rozental, Pinqas ha-haganah ha-`ivrit u-fe`uloteha, vol. 1 ('Ukraynah: ha-Haganah ha-`ivrit be-`ir Boguslav (1919-1923)) (Tel-Aviv: ha-'Aretz, 1929), 13 [The Book of Hebrew Defense and its Activities: Ukraine: Hebrew Defense in Boguslav, 1919-1923]. The largest number provided by contemporary accounts is 50,000; in reality, the number of refugees present at a single time probably did not exceed 10,000. For the 50,000 estimate, see: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, hereafter: RGASPI) 272/1/81/90, published as: “Stranitsa krasnoi samooborony,” Evreiskaia proletarskaia mysl’ 22-23 (June 10, 1921), 44 [The Page of Red Self-Defense]. For a 1923 report mentioning 15,000 refugees, see: Joint Distribution Committee Archive in New York (hereafter: JDC NYC) 1921-1932 / USSR: Localities, General and A-B / 355996 / 1.
[4] Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivs’koi oblast (State Archive of Kyiv Oblast, hereafter: DAKO) R-3050/1/47/73.
[5] DAKO R-3050/1/47/20; DAKO R-3050/1/48/14-14ob.
[6] DAKO R-3031/1/12/1ob, 8, 10, 133 = 141; DAKO R-3050/1/29/1 = 2; DAKO R-3050/1/53/12-12ob = 16-16ob = 19-19 = 21-22 = Tsentra’lnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh organiv vlady Ukrainy (Central State Archives of Supreme Organs of Authority of Ukraine, hereafter: TsDAVOU) 2497/3/136/11; DAKO R-3050/1/48/53 = 55, 49ob = 58ob = DAKO R-3050/1/132/10 = 59ob = 63; DAKO R-3050/1/48/33 = DAKO R-3050/1/53/15ob; DAKO R-3050/1/48/36; DAKO R-3050/1/48/25 = DAKO R-3050/1/53/62 = DAKO R-3050/1/155/24; RGASPI 272/1/100/49 = 52 = 54 = RGASPI 272/1/543/167; RGASPI 272/1/288/4, 28. See also reports on: Volodymyr Serhiichuk, ed. Pohromy v Ukraïni, 1914-1920: vid shtuchnykh stereotypiv do hirkoï pravdy, prykhovuvano v radians’kykh arkhivakh (Kyiv: O. Telihy, 1998), 337-339, 434-435, 437-440, 443 [Pogroms in Ukraine, 1914-1920: From Artificial Stereotypes to the Hard Truth, Hidden in Soviet Archives]; L. B. Miliakova and I. A. Ziuzina, eds., Kniga pogromov: pogromy na Ukraine, v Belorussii i evropeiskoi chasti Rossii v periode Grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918-1922 gg.: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007), 348-349, 434-436, 440-441 [The Book of Pogroms: Pogroms in the Ukraine, Belarus and the European Part of Russia in the Civil War Period, 1918-1922.
[7] Rozental, Pinqas ha-haganah, 58.
[8] DAKO R-3050/1/132/2 = DAKO R-3050/1/47/7.
[9] DAKO R-3050/1/47/39-40 = DAKO R-3050/1/122/11-12 = DAKO R-3050/1/132/49-50; also published as: Miliakova and Ziuzina, eds., Kniga pogromov, 450-451.
[10] Viktor Gusev, “O evreiskikh pogromakh, pomoshchi postradavshchim, i emigratsii evreev iz Ukrainy (1917-1921 gg.),” Vestnik evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve 3 (7) (1994): 68-78, quote from p. 76 [On Jewish Pogroms, Relief for the Pogrom-Stricken, and the Emigration of Jews from Ukraine (1917-1921)]. For a disparaging account of the Evsektsiia’s obstructionism, see: Yankev Leshtshinski, Tsvishn lebn un toyt: Tsen yor yidish-lebn in Sovyet-Rusland, vol. 1 (Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1930), 65-74 [Between Life and Death: Ten Years of Jewish Life in Soviet Russia].
[11] On the urban crises, see, e.g.: Daniel R. Brower, “'The City in Danger': The Civil War and the Russian Urban Population,” in Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War, ed. Diane Koenker, William G. Rosenberg, and Ronald Grigor Suny (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 58-80.
[12] RGASPI 272/1/90/102 = 106ob.
[13] Tsentra’lnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads’kikh ob’ednan’ Ukrainy (Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine, hereafter: TsDAHOU) 1/20/799/7 = CAHJP RU1554/7; on the plan see also: Gusev, “O evreiskikh pogromakh,” 74-75; Viktor Gusev, “Sionistkoe dvizhenie v sovetskoi Ukraine v pervoi polovine 20-kh godov XX veka: arkhivy OGPU svidetel'stuiut,” in Rossiiskii sionizm: Istoriia i kul'tura (materialy nauchnoi konferentsii), ed. Oleg Budnitskii et alia (Moscow: Sefer; Dom Evreiskoi Knigi, 2002), 266-267 [The Zionist Movement in Soviet Ukraine in the First Half of the '20s of the 20th Century: The OGPU Archives Testify].
[14] TsDAHOU 1/20/777/188-189 = 225 = CAHJP RU1574/188-189 = 225; RGASPI 445/1/54/103 = TsDAHOU 1/20/781/22.
[15] On Litvakova, see: Ben-Tziyon Dinur, be-`Olam she-shaq`a: Zikhronot u-reshumot mi-derekh chayim 644-674 (Jerusalem: Mosad Bi'aliq, 1958), 291-292 [A Vanished World: Memories of a Way of Life].
[16] TsDAHOU 1/20/777/150 = 152 = CAHJP RU1574/150 = 152.
[17] TsDAHOU 1/20/776/27 = 29; see also on: “Di 4-te alruslandishe konfrents fun yidsektsyes (rezolutsyes),” Der komunist 7 (16) (August 10, 1921): 8 [The 4th All-Russian Conference of Evsektsii]; “Vegn emigratsye,” Der veker 61 (890) (July 8, 1921): 2 [On Emigration]; see also: Gusev, “O evreiskikh pogromakh,” 76-77.
[18] Central Archive for the History of the Jewish people (hereafter: CAHJP) P-10a/VII/1/2/1 = YIVO Archive 80/135/10504 = 10508 = JDC NYC 1919-1921 / Russia, Pogroms, 1920 / 233373 / 21; see also as: “bi-Tfutzotenu: Ch. ‘Ostroy,” Quntres 23 (January 30, 1920): 21 [In the Diaspora: Kh. Ostroi]; Rakhel Feygnberg, “Tachat ha-patish,” Reshumot 3 (1923): XXX [Under the Hammer]; Rachel Feygenberg, Megilat Dubovah: toldot `ir she-`avrah ve-bitlah min ha-`olam (Tel-Aviv: La-`am, 1940), 80 [The Scroll of Dubovo: History of a City that Passed Away and Ceased to Exist in this World]; Rakhel Feygnberg, Megilot yehude Rusyah (Jerusalem: Qiryat sefer, 1965), 93 [The Scrolls of the Jews of Russia].
[19] DAKO R-3050/1/30/108-108ob; DAKO R-3050/1/123/4 = 18 = 65, 9 = 23 = 69-70, 137-138; on refugees to Shpola, see also: Aniutah P'ust-Bronshtein, “Shmu'el Bronshtein Z''L: r'osh ha-wa`ad we-ha-haganah be-Shpolah,” in Shpolah: masekhet chaye yehudim ba-`ayyarah, ed. Dawid Kohen (Haifa: 'Irgun yotz'e Shpolah be-Yisra'el, 1965), 270 [Shmu'el Bronshtein, May His Memory be for a Blessing: The Head of the Committee and the Self-Defense in Shpola].
[20] TsDAVOU 3204/1/77/4.
[21] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/10-11.
[22] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/17-19; see also: 3204/1/75/3ob; CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 1, p. 3. The head of the unit also appeared the next day at a session of the Uezd Bureau of Profsoiuzy, warning them as well of the impending “panicky flight of Jewish laboring masses,” and its consequences on large cities: TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/33-33ob.
[23] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/14-15ob; quote from l. 14ob.
[24] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/8-9ob, quote from l. 9.
[25] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/2-5ob.
[26] DAKO R-3050/1/122/21 = 25ob. The signatories were the units of Tarashcha, Boguslav, Kanev, Ol’shana, Rakitno, Steblev, Shenderovka, and Shpola.
[27] TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/27ob-28 = TsDAVOU 3204/1/78/2ob-3 = RGASPI 272/1/100/92ob-93 = 99 = TsDAVOU 5/1/661/4-4ob. See also: TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/35 = TsDAVOU 3204/1/77/49 = RGASPI 272/1/100/86.
[28] TsDAVOU 1/20/794/149 = CAHJP RU1556/149. The petition was signed by the Cherkassy, Smela, Zlatopol’, and Gorodishche units.
[29] Z. Ostrovskii, Evreiskie pogromy: 1918-1921 (Moscow: Shkola i kniga, 1926), 128 [Jewish Pogroms 1918-1921].
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