The first part of this blog post (see here) discussed how Jewish self-defense groups influenced the migration patterns of pogrom refugees. Fleeing violence and destruction, Jewish displaced persons were flocking to towns with Jewish paramilitaries, which thereby deviated the stream of displaced persons from the border areas and the big cities. Soviet Jewish authorities were concerned that Jewish mass emigration could be used as a propaganda tool by Western powers, who would posit it as a proof of the Soviet government’s inability to suppress antisemitism. Soviet authorities were more concerned that Jewish migrants descending upon cities already overflowing with refugees might aggravate the multiple crises affecting urban areas.
Both Soviet Jewish and Soviet authorities were aware of the correlation between the issue of pogrom refugees and that of Jewish paramilitaries. For Soviet Jewish authorities, opposition to Jewish-only armed forces suspected of Zionist leanings overrode their immediate concerns of Jewish emigration. However, Soviet authorities were often willing to tolerate or support the continued existence of Jewish units. These, in turn, seized the opportunity presented by this constellation and emphasized their role as a de facto refugee aid organization. Thus, the pogrom refugee question was turned into a source of legitimacy for Jewish self-defense groups.
In what follows, I will discuss how pogrom refugees joined existing Jewish units, the formation of refugee units, and how Jewish armed groups took upon themselves an additional role in managing the refugee crisis: that of resettling pogrom refugees and rebuilding their home shtetls.
Recruiting Pogrom Refugees
For self-defense units, the refugee question not merely a proxy issue. When the 1st Kiev Guberniia Self-Defense Conference, the first major convention of the Jewish paramilitary network, convened in mid-March 1921, the issue figured prominently on the agenda. In the end, the delegates resolved to organize self-defense detachments from refugees, so that they can return to their hometowns.[1]
Indeed, with the waning of anti-Jewish violence in 1922-1923, forming units of refugees to allow refugees to return and rebuild their shtetls became one of the primary tasks of the self-defense units. An article in the self-defense network’s journal praised the new challenge thus: “The mere fact of organizing a self-defense unit positively influences the psychology of the exhausted refugee. With strengthened belief in his power, with full certainty in the next day, the most energetic refugees organize self-defense and decisively take to restoring the destroyed shtetl. The first settlers live through rough minutes. In their eyes there are still horrific images of the recent past, the cries of the murdered are still ringing in their ears. But time does its job.” Listing numerous shtetls rebuilt with the help of refugees-turned-paramilitaries, the author advocated initially dispatching a self-defense detachment to pogromized shtetls to maintain order and train local Jews – who could then gradually replace the manpower of the unit.[2]
One of the most significant such cases was that of Gorodishche, pogromized by Golyi in September 1920, with numerous Jews saved by the intervention of the mighty Boguslav unit. After the pogrom, the Jewish population left the town, but began to return following the formation of a self-defense detachment with the help of the Shpola self-defense unit.[3] As one of the returning Jews wrote, nearly 200 Jewish families moved to Gorodishche back a few months after the pogrom, opening a leather workshop, stores, a hospital, and renovating houses. When, in early 1922, men from Golyi’s band again began circling the town, better-off Jews fled, and only about a hundred families remained. Despite repeated attacks in the spring of 1922, the unit grew stronger, and the remnant of the Gorodishche Jews stood their ground.[4] They, however, were not the only beneficiaries of the security and restoration efforts: in May 1922 the Volost Executive Committee declared the young self-defense unit to be the sole guardian of local warehouses and enterprises, and proposed a monthly payment for their services.[5]
Members of the Gorodishche self-defense unit[5A]
Refugees into Self-Defense Activists
By August, the Gorodishche unit itself nearly became a link in the chain reaction of mushrooming self-defense units: its commander attended a general gathering of residents in a nearby locality, which resolved to ask the uezd-level anti-banditry authority, the Pereiaslav Uezd Military Convention, to provide them with a permission to bear arms as well as with 25 rifles for the purpose of self-defense. Although the new unit quickly recruited almost 150 men, their request was refused outright.[6]
Indeed, in several cases, pogrom refugees themselves were among the initiators or prominent participants of self-defense. The Committee of Rzhishchev Refugees selected several people in December 1920 and January 1921, putting them in charge of returning to the town, organizing self-defense, and reviving economic life. The Kiev Uezd Revolutionary Committee was committed to help the venture, and sent one of the refugees to the Boguslav unit to ask for self-defense members to be sent to Rzhishchev in order to help with the tasks at hand.[7] Under the protection of the Boguslav unit, Rzhishchev refugees began to return to their hometown, established their own self-defense detachment, and by the end of May 1921 the Jewish population reached 200 families.[8] About a year later, the Chairman of the Volost Executive Committee and the local Red Army Garrison declared that “the entire shtetl began to revive and flourish thanks to the calmness instilled in the raion by the self-defense unit.”[9]
Similar cases of participation and organization of self-defense were frequent. Already in 1919, refugees from Siniava and Litin enrolled in the Khmel’nik unit.[10] Later, similar instances took place with Smela and refugees from localities such as Gorodishche and Rotmistrovka,[11] Shpola and refugees from Lebedin,[12] and also in Zlatopol’, where numerous refugees from the surrounding shtetls had found shelter.[13] In 1921-1922 the Boguslav and Kanev units helped set up self-defense in Stepantsy, whence the largest single contingent of refugees had fled to Boguslav.[14] Motivated by a sense of loss and by the desire to restore their honor and property, pogrom refugees appeared to be ideal candidates for forming self-defense units.
Members of the Rzhishchev self-defense unit[14A]
Belarus as an Outlier
Unlike in Ukraine, Soviet Jewish authorities in Belorussia at times lent support to self-defense units in general and refugee units in particular. Abandoning the principle of refraining from exploiting Jewish vengefulness, Soviet Jewish authorities in Belorussia viewed the presumed willingness of pogrom refugees to retaliate and reconquer their property by force as an opportunity. Around March 1921, the Jewish Subdepartment of the Gomel’ Department of Nationalities Affairs pointed out in a report that the hundreds of refugees flocking to the city put a “heavy burden” on Soviet organs and institutions. In order the do away the root cause of the refugee problem, the Jewish Subdepartment urged to step up the fight against banditism and proposed to arm the approximately 600 refugees who fled to Gomel’ from pogrom-stricken localities. The report proposed to then pour the refugees into Red Army units sent to fight bands and uproot pogromshchiki, thereby nipping the flood of refugees in the bud.[15]
Belorussian Jews were subjected to deadly pogroms in June 1921, and this further exacerbated the refugee crisis. Two months later, in August 1921, the 1st Conference of the Jewish Sections of the Communist Party (Evsektsiia) in Belorussia declared returning refugees to their hometowns to be a primary policy aim.[16] Likely in the wake of this decision the chairmen of the three most prominent Jewish public organizations – EKOPO, OZE, and ORT –[17] petitioned the Council of People's Commissars of Belorussia to allow the formation of self-defense groups. Drawing attention to the interplay between the refugee and self-defense issue in Ukraine, they argued that “[t]here is no doubt that with allowing Jewish guards [to operate], the majority of refugees would return to their usual places, to their normal working life.”[18] In January 1922, in turn, it was Jewish agricultural colonists themselves – refugees from Bobriusk and Borisov uezds – who petitioned the Main Bureau of the Evsektsiia in Belorussia for permission to organize self-defense detachments at their own expense. Not only did the Evsektsiia agree, but it also resolved to ask the party’s Central Committee and Central Executive Committee order its uezd-level executive committees to provide support for the colonists.[19]
Returning and Rebuilding
The return of pogrom refugees to their home shtetls was a veritable demonstration of power. Notable was the case of Shpola, home to many refugees from nearby Mokraia Kaligorka, who at the end of June 1922 requested permission from the Zvenigorodka Uezd Executive Committee to return and set up a self-defense unit.[20] The question was delegated to the Uezd Military Convention, which sanctioned the plan within a month. Intent on keeping the spread of Jewish armed forces in check, however, the Convention at the same time decreed that the Shpola and Zvenigorodka units discharge 50 people each, handing over their weapons to the new unit of Mokraia Kaligorka.[21]
The “reconquest” Mokraia Kaligorka was prepared well in advance. A few weeks before the refugees asked permission to return, the Shpola unit had already conducted an incursion to Mokraia Kaligorka, reportedly engaging in disorderly shooting, for which it was reprimanded by the Uezd Military Convention.[22] In late August, the Shpola unit in fact armed 80 refugees, and provided hundreds of self-defense members to escort the column of refugees-turned-paramilitaries marching to Mokraia Kaligorka. With the Shpola unit’s orchestra at the helm, the units paraded through the streets to the sound of trumpets, instilling fear into locals as well as the bandits operating around the town. When the Shpola unit left, the returned refugees reportedly parted with them with tears in their eyes, kissing unit members and thanking them for their hospitality and help.[23] About a month after their return, the refugees’ unit was also warned by the Uezd Military Convention, as they had been reportedly evicting residents – presumably those who had occupied the refugees’ houses – and resorting to other extrajudicial measures.[24]
Members of the Shpola self-defense unit with a trumpeter on the far-left side[25]
Such feats became a point of pride for self-defense units. When facing imminent disbanding in October 1922, representatives of the Kiev Guberniia self-defense units in their petition proudly referred to their role in safeguarding the rebuilding of numerous towns, warning that doing away with their units would result in the flight of Jews to cities en masse “with all the horrors of refugeedom.”[26] The following month, self-defense representatives from Zvenigorodka Uezd remarked upon their success in setting up numerous detachments in destroyed shtetls, due to which refugees “revived, were drawn back from all corners of Ukraine, from the borders of Poland and Romania.”[27]
While self-defense groups were being persecuted and disbanded throughout Ukraine, as late as April 1923 the Communist Party’s Kiev Guberniia Executive Committee expressed its support for keeping the units in place. As they concluded in report submitted to the National Minorities Department of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, even smaller self-defense units had beneficial psychological effects on refugees, thereby alleviating the burden on cities by contributing to the refugees’ return to and rebuilding of their hometowns. Indeed, the Committee emphasized that assisting with the issue of refugees had become the sole purpose of Jewish units, declaring that “in no locality in Kiev Guberniia are there expressions of pogrom sentiment, moreover, no observable agitation is conducted in this direction, and if self-defense in the indicated localities is still permitted, it is only with the goal of giving psychological opportunity to Jewish refugees to return to the old places and liberate the cities from the superfluous jobless element.”[28]
International Fundraising and the Refugee Question
While the refugee crisis acquired particular significance for self-defense units in their dealings with Soviet authorities, its centrality was no less pronounced in their international fundraising efforts. In five of the six extant memoranda to the All-World Jewish Aid Conference – penned between sometime in late 1921 and June 1923 – Self-Defense Plenipotentiary Iakov Rakhlis highlighted the role of the self-defense network in solving the refugee question. Apart from being a cause worthy of donations on its own right, this emphasis on the refugee crisis might have also increased the willingness of potential foreign donors to support the self-defense network, seeing that it was focusing on issues less likely to meet opposition on the part of the government, and thus better suited for receiving financial support from abroad. Concomitantly, the self-defense network thereby might have hoped to compete for funding with the established Jewish public and aid organizations operating in Ukraine.
Rakhlis’ first missive decried that at the time of pogroms non-Jews refused to provide refuge for their Jewish neighbors, who were therefore forced to choose between hiding in vain until found and slaughtered or – as poor Jews did not have the means to flee to cities – self-defense. The latter choice eventually led to “a major role in regulating the wave of refugees and reconstructing destroyed Jewish shtetls (…) self-defense played its historic role, as under its aegis, one after another, destroyed shtetls began to revive.” Enumerating a long line of cases when major units helped refugees set up their own detachments, Rakhlis added: “[n]ot less important is the psychological significance of self-defense [units]. The sheer fact of their existence acts calmingly on the consciousness of the Jewish population, gives it hope in its power, and confidence in the coming day. Moreover, shtetl Jewry has grown accustomed to [the existence] self-defense to such an extent that it cannot imagine its existence without them.” Rakhlis concluded the memorandum by urging that “everyone for whom hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives are dear, for whom the restoration and revitalization of destroyed shtetls under [the protection of] the self-defense is dear, must as soon as possible provide financial support for the self-defense in this moment that is [so] critical for them.”[29]
The second memorandum continued this thought, declaring that “self-defense overstepped the boundaries of its competence and was drawn into the great issue of restoring destroyed Jewish localities in Ukraine. With one hand the self-defense unit defends its shtetl from Jewish pogroms, and the other [hand] it extends to his exiled refugee-brother wallowing in a foreign land, and helps him return to his old place.”[30] Written at the time of repeated threats to the legal existence of self-defense units, the third memorandum from December 2, 1922 warned that disbanding self-defense will bring about a “mass flight of the Jewish population to the big cities and emigration with all the resultant consequences.”[31] The fourth, likely written in 1923, contained a list of towns revived thanks to major units setting up refugee detachments there, and thus providing a “[p]sychological guarantee of their [the refugees’] security and confidence in the coming day.” In this memorandum, Rakhlis also proposed to form a refugee committee under the self-defense network. The refugee committee was to be put in charge of setting up refugee detachments, providing legal aid for refugees to recover stolen property, organizing cultural life, and helping productivize pogrom-stricken refugees through industrial and agricultural cooperatives, or credit and aid funds.[32]
Finally, in his fifth memorandum from June 1923, Rakhlis struck an optimistic note, and his remarks on the indicated that the role of self-defense was gradually shifting from treating the refugee crisis by helping Jews return to, rebuild, and put down roots in their home shtetls. In effect, self-defense units are depicted as moving on to the peacetime activities envisioned by Rakhlis in his previous memorandum. After mentioning recent cases of Jews returning under the protection of self-defense, where they “slowly rebuild their destroyed hearths and normal life is gradually restored,” Rakhlis noted that self-defense units also took to escorting Jews to markets, since even though bandits did not dare to attack shtetls any more they were still active on the roads.[33]
Between 1920-1922, the self-defense network grew into a mighty force, and helped curb anti-Jewish violence, which all but disappeared by 1922-1923. Starting out as anti-pogrom force, the self-defense network – following numerous and often parallel iterations – lastly morphed into a refugee aid and rebuilding organization. Finally, with the waning of the refugee crisis, Rakhlis attempted to position his organization as a holistic Jewish state-building force. However, with its most evident missions accomplished and now under siege by Soviet power (the topic of my next blog post, watch this space), Rakhlis’ attempt to steer the self-defense network in this direction was doomed to fail. The last of the self-defense units were disbanded in 1923. Rakhlis himself left the USSR no later than 1925, for some time stayed in Berlin with Elias Tcherikower, the prominent pogrom historian, and emigrated to the US in November 1925 (see my earlier blog post on Rakhlis here).
Notes
[1] Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, hereafter: RGASPI) 445/1/39/50ob; see also in Yiddish: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, hereafter: GARF) R-1339/1/421/184.
[2] “Cherez organizatsiiu novykh samooboron – k vosstanovleniiu razrushennykh evreiskikh mestechek,” Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 21 [Through the Organization of New Self-Defense Units towards the Restoration of Destroyed Jewish Shtetls]; see also: “O novykh samooboron,” Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 21 [On New Self-Defense Units]. The articles listed Gorodishche, Koshevatoe, Mokraia Kaligorka, Rzhishchev, Stepantsy, Stavishche, and Vinograd as successful examples, and noted preparations to establish units in Dashev, Fundukleevka, Kagarlyk, Kamenka, Kitaigorod, Il’intsy, Lipovets, Monastyrishche, Nastashka, Radomysl’, and Stavishche (sic).
[3] Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivs’koi oblast (State Archive of Kyiv Oblast, hereafter: DAKO) R-3050/1/122/23ob = Tsentra’lnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh organiv vlady Ukrainy (Central State Archives of Supreme Organs of Authority of Ukraine, hereafter: TsDAVOU) 1/20/799/50 = TSDAVOU 3204/1/77/31ob = TsDAVOU 3204/1/75/34ob = RGASPI 272/1/94/56 = 58 = 66; TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/8ob = TsDAVOU 5/1/662/2ob; Yankev Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts in Ukraine: In di shoyderlekhe teg fun Petlyure'n un farsheydene pogrom-bandes (New York: s.n., 1926), 40 [The Jewish Self-Defense in Ukraine: In the Dreadful Days of Petliura and Various Pogrom-Bands].
[4] “A horodishtsher, “Fun der provints: A khorevdiker yishev (A brif fun Horodishtsh),” Komunistishe fon 82 (602) (June 24, 1922): 2 [From the Provinces: A Destroyed Settelement (A Letter from Gorodishche)].
[5] Central Archive for the History of the Jewish people (hereafter: CAHJP) P-10a/VII/2/6/33.
[5A] Z. Ostrovskii, Evreiskie pogromy: 1918-1921 (Moscow: Shkola i kniga, 1926), 130 [Jewish Pogroms 1918-1921].
[6] Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv Ministerstvo oborony Ukrainy (Departmental State Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, hereafter: HDA MOU) 3831/20277/10/2-6ob, 18ob = HDA MOU 3773/19823/9/27.
[7] DAKO R-3/1/273/1-7, 15-16; TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/7 = TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/62-62ob = DAKO R-102/210/13.
[8] TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/9 = 13 = TSDAVOU 3204/1/76/63 = TsDAVOU 3204/1/75/3ob = TsDAVOU 5/1/662/3; TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/14 = TSDAVOU 3204/1/76/65; CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/6/10; CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 1, p. 2-3; Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts, 40.
[9] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/6/10.
[10] Abram Ratslis, “Gorod potomkov makaveev,” Sion 32 (1980): 156 [The City of the Maccabees' Successors]; Ze'ev 'Igeret, “ha-Haganah ha-`atzmit be-Chmelniq,” in Naftule dor, ed. Binyamin West, 2 vols., vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Mishlechet chutz-la-'aretz shel Tze`ire Tziyon - Hit'achdut be-Rusyah ha-sovyetit, 1955), 146 [The Self-Defense in Khmel'nik].
[11] RGASPI 272/1/81/90, published as: “Stranitsa krasnoi samooborony,” Evreiskaia proletarskaia mysl’ 22-23 (June 10, 1921), 45 [The Page of Red Self-Defense].
[12] Dawid Ben'ari, “mi-Haganah `atzmit la-Haganah,” in Sefer Yagur: 40 shanah la-`aliyah `al ha qarq`a, ed. Ze'ev Rimon (Tel Aviv: Mesheq Yagur, 1965), 239 [From Self-Defense to the Haganah]; Dawid Ben'ari, “mi-Haganah `atzmit le-`aliyah chalutzit,” in Chalutzim hayinu be-Rusiyah, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved - Tarbut we-chinukh, 1976), 111-112 [From Self-Defense to Halutz Aliyah]; Yehudah Slobody'aniq, “ha-Haganah be-Shpolah,” in Sefer Tz''S.: le-Qorot ha-miflagah ha-tziyonit-sotzi'alistit u-vrit no`ar Tz. S. bi-Vrit ha-Mo`atzot, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved, 1963), 311 [The Self-Defense in Shpola]; Yehudah Slobody'aniq, “'Irgun ha-haganah ha-`atzmit,” in Shpolah: masekhet chaye yehudim ba-`ayyarah, ed. Dawid Kohen (Haifa: ‘Irgun yotz'e Shpolah be-Yisra'el, 1965), 254 [The Self-Defense Organization].
[13] Y. Raz, “ha-Haganah be-Zlatopol,” in Sefer Tz''S: le-Qorot ha-miflagah ha-tziyonit-sotzi'alistit u-vrit no`ar Tz. S. bi-Vrit ha-Mo`atzot, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved, 1963), 318 [The Self-Defense in Zlatopol'].
[14] “Khronika: Kievskii raion: Kanev,” Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 15 [Chronicle: Kiev Raion: Kanev]; CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 1, p. 3; Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts, 40.
[14A] Ostrovskii, Evreiskie pogromy, 130.
[15] RGASPI 445/1/75/146, 149, 167. Throughout the Civil War, rumors circulated about Jewish-only punitive units composed of pogrom survivors – especially from Proskurov – but I have found no documents supporting these claims; see, e.g.: Shlomoh Blatman, “min-ha-Haganah ha-yehudit bi-me ha-pra`ot” Quntres 67 (February 1, 1921): 20 [On Jewish Self-Defense In the Days of the Pogroms]; Lipa Shapira, ba-Qalachat ha-rusit: pirqe zikhronot (1914-1924) (Jerusalem: A. Lustigman, 1941-1942), 100 [In the Russian Turmoil: Memoirs (1914-1924)]; Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: the Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 70; Yehudah Slutzqi, Sefer toldot ha-haganah, ed. Ben-Tziyon Dinur, 8 vols., vol. 2/1 (mi-Haganah le-ma'avaq), ha-Sifriyah ha-tziyonit (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved - Tzava' haganah le-Yisra'el - Ma`arakhot, 1959), 44 [History of the Haganah: From Defense to Struggle]. However, a Jewish officer, Ensign Tseitlin, reportedly tried to organize such a unit under Balakhovich, and many Jews no doubt joined the Red Army in order to take revenge. On Tseitlin, see: NARB 4P/1/623/97; Inna Pavlovna Gerasimova, “Deiatel'nost' pravitel'stva Belorusskoi Narodnoi Respubliki v otnoshenii evreiskikh pogromov v Belorussii (1920-1921 gg.),” in Evrei v meniaiushchemsia mire: Materialy 3-i mezdhunarodnoi konferentsii: Riga, 25-27 oktiabria, 1999, ed. Herman Branover and Rubin Ferber (Riga: Fond 'Shamir' im. M. Dubina, 2000), 382-383 [The Activities of the Government of the Belorussian People's Republic regarding Jewish Pogroms in Belorussia (1920-1921)]; on joining to take revenge, see, e.g.: Ya`aqov Midrashi, Bershad we-ha-haganah shelah (Tel-Aviv: ha-Bershad'aim she-be-'Eretz-Yisra'el, 1935), 27 [Bershad and its Self-Defense]; Yehudah 'Erez, “ba-Tzava' ha-'adom be-sof milchemet ha-'ezrachim,” in Sefer Tz''S.: le-Qorot ha-miflagah ha-tziyonit-sotzi'alistit u-vrit no`ar Tz. S. bi-Vrit ha-Mo`atzot, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved, 1963), 259 [In the Red Army at the End of the Civil War]; Raz, “ha-Haganah be-Zlatopol,” 323; 'Avraham Zdranovsqi, “ha-Haganah be-Monastirishtz'eh,” in Sefer Tz''S.: le-Qorot ha-miflagah ha-tziyonit-sotzi'alistit u-vrit no`ar Tz. S. bi-Vrit ha-Mo`atzot, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved, 1963), 327 [The Self-Defense in Monastyrishche].
[16] Natsyianal'ny arkhiw Respubliki Belarus' (State Archive of the Republic of Belarus, hereafter: NARB) 4P/1/615/78.
[17] Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population, and Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, respectively.
[18] GARF 6990/1/6/16.
[19] NARB 4P/1/959/7 = 9; on agricultural colonies in Belorussia in this period, see: Gitelman, Jewish Nationality, 242-243; Leonid Smilovitsky, “The Jewish Farmers in Belarus during the 1920s,” Jewish Political Studies Review 9, no. 1-2 (1997): 61-63.
[20] Derzhavnyi arkhiv Cherkas’koi oblasti (State Archive of Cherkasy Oblast’, hereafter: DAChO Cherkasy) R-189/1/42/90.
[21] HDA MOU 3773/19823/43/30.
[22] HDA MOU 3773/19823/43/22.
[23] CAHJP P-10/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 4, p. 1; A. Kiyever, “A brif fun Ukrayne,” Forverts 25, no. 9119 (October 21, 1922): 8 [A Letter from Ukraine]; Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts, 39-40.
[24] HDA MOU 3773/19823/33/25.
[25] Ostrovskii, Evreiskie pogromy, 129.
[26] HDA MOU 3773/19823/37/38ob.
[27] YIVO Archive RG80/27/2327 = HDA MOU 3773/19823/37/9.
[28] RGASPI 44/5/1/133/40-41, quote from l. 41; also on: GARF R-1318/1/795/13 = 16 = 17.
[29] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 2, p. 1-4, quotes from pp. 2-4.
[30] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 2, p. 1.
[31] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 3, p. 1.
[32] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 4, pp. 1-2; quote from p. 2. See a similar wording in Memorandum no. 1 and “Cherez organizatsiiu novykh samooboron – k vosstanovleniiu razrushennykh evreiskikh mestechek,” Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 20-21 [Through the Organization of New Self-Defense Units towards the Restoration of Destroyed Jewish Shtetls].
[33] YIVO Archive RG80/27/2309.
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