The Russian army and the Jews: Mass deportation, hostages, and violence during World War I

Russian Review

Volumn 60, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 404-419

  Lohr, Eric ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0346163980     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0036-0341.00177     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. Altshuler cites a figure of 500,000-600,000 Jews deported and expelled during the war. Frankel estimates that one million Jews were expelled by the end of 1915. See M. Altshuler, "Russia and Her Jews: The Impact of the 1914 War," The Wiener Library Bulletin 27, no. 30/31 (1973): 14
2. and Jonathan Frankel, ed., Studies in Contemporary Jewry: An Annual, vol. 4. The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914-1921 (Bloomington, 1988), 6
3. The best study remains [Maxim M. Vinaver, D. O. Zaslavskii, and G. M. Erlikh], "Iz 'chernoi knigi' rossiiskogo evreistva: Materialy dlia istorii voiny 1914-1915 g.," Evreiskaia starina, 1918, no. 10:195-296
4. The Collegium of Jewish Social Activists, an interparty group of leading Jewish politicians and Duma deputies, collected copies of military and civilian deportation orders as well as reports from individuals and communities affected. This mass of information, which has not survived in full, served as the basis for the publication of selected documents in "Dokumenty o presledovanii evreev," Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii 19 (1928): 245-84
5. See also the memoir of a Jewish political activist who participated in relief efforts for Jewish deportees, Ia. G. Frumkin, "Iz istorii rossiiskogo evreistva," in Kniga o russkom evreistve ot 1860-kh godov do revoliutsii 1917 g., sbornik statei (New York, 1960), 74-110
6. All other discussions of the wartime deportations are based primarily upon these three sources. See American Jewish Committee, The Jews in the Eastern War Zone (New York, 1916)
7. and E. R. A. Seligman, The War and the Jews in Russia (New York, 1916)
8. The Jewish newspapers Evreiskaia nedelia and Evreiskaia zhizn' occasionally provided news about deportations, although they were prohibited from directly criticizing the military's role, and usually from even mentioning the deportations. The best recent studies are Daniel William Graf, "The Reign of the Generals: Military Government in Western Russia, 1914-1915" (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1972), 118-35
9. Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772-1917 (Chur, 1993), 323-84
10. and Sergei Nelipovich, "V poiskakh 'vnutrennego vraga': Deportatsionnaia politika Rossii (1914-1917)," in Pervaia mirovaia voina i uchastie v nei Rossii (1914-1918), pt. 1 (Moscow, 1994), 59-61
11. Michael Howard, War in European History (New York, 1976), 93
12. Peter Holquist, "To Count, To Extract, To Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia," in Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2002)
13. For an argument that the Russian Empire actually was finding a liberal civic means of including Jews see Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900-14: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (Houndmills, 1995)
14. For prewar debates over army allegations of Jewish attempts to avoid service and disproportionate involvement in spying see Joshua Sanborn, "Drafting the Nation: Military Conscription and the Formation of a Modern Polity in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, 1905-1925" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998), 285-96
15. Voina i evrei (St. Petersburg, 1912)
16. and M. L. Usov, Evrei v armii (St. Petersburg, 1911)
17. On these deportations see Eric Lohr, "Enemy Alien Politics Within the Russian Empire During the First World War" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999), chaps. 2-3
18. See Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, Antisemitismus und reaktionäre Utopie: Russischer Konservatismus im Kampf gegen den Wandel von Staat und Gesellschaft, 1890-1917 (Hamburg, 1978)
19. and idem, The Tsars and the Jews
20. On the campaigns against Germans and foreigners see Lohr, "Enemy Alien Politics."
21. Polozhenie o polevom upravlenii voisk v voennoe vremia (Petrograd, 1914)
22. Graf, "The Reign of the Generals."
23. Bakhmetieff Archives, Columbia University, Bark Memoirs, chap. 14, p. 43
24. RGVIA, f. 2005, op. 1, d. 155
25. On this problem see David McDonald, United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia, 1900-1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1992)
26. The military had played an extensive role in civilian affairs for decades prior to 1914, especially when the government used it extensively from 1905 to 1907 as a police force to suppress rebellion. Ironically, according to William Fuller, the biggest complaint of the army against civilian authorities in the prewar decades was the use of the army for civilian police functions. The army showed little evidence of this attitude during World War I - at least with regard to its deportation policies. See Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914 (Princeton, 1985), esp. chap. 5
27. "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 233
28. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 9458, op. 1, d. 145, ll. 67-70
29. "Dokumenty o presledovanii," 247-48
30. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 27 (Ivanov circular to army commanders, 28 January 1915)
31. "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 236
32. Graf, "The Reign of the Generals," 143
33. YIVO, New York, Mowshowitz Collection, 13094
34. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 48 (Popov to commander of Dvinsk Military District [17 March 1915])
35. RGVIA, f. 2005, op. 1, d. 153, l. 601 (Rabbi Girshovich to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, 28 April 1915)
36. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 166 (Kurland governor report, 7 June 1915)
37. Graf, "The Reign of the Generals," 127
38. "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 240
39. RGVIA, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 991, ll. 33-34
40. RGVIA, f. 1759, op. 3, d. 1422, l. 7 (Dzhunkovskii to commander of Kiev Military District, 10 February 1915)
41. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, ll. 35, 40, 43 (Damlov to Tumanov, 2 and 8 February 1915); (Dzhunkovskii to Tumanov, 16 February 1915)
42. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 95 (Poltava governor to commander of Dvinsk Military District, 8 May 1915)
43. GARF, f. 1467, op. 1, d. 635, ll. 10-11
44. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, ll. 146, 211
45. For an account of the opposition of government ministers to army policies toward the Jews see Michael Cherniavsky, Prologue to a Revolution: Notes of A. N. Lakhontov on the Secret Meetings of the Council of Ministers, 1915 (New Jersey, 1967), 56-64
46. Sovet ministrov Rossiiskoi Imperii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: Bumagi A. N. Iakhontova (Zapisi zasedanii i perepiska) (St. Petersburg, 1999), 163-64
47. Such concerns were discussed by the Council of Ministers (Cherniavsky, Prologue to Revolution, 56-64)
48. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 138 (Alekseev to commanders of 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th and 12th Armies, Kurlov, Tumanov, Engalychev, 8 May 1915)
49. RGIA, f. 465, op. 1, d. 13, l. 21
50. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 302
51. Sergiichuk, Pogromi v Ukraini, 104-5
52. RGVIA, f. 2003, op. 2, d. 539, l. 21 (reports of the Chancery of the governor-general of Galicia, 28 August 1914-1 July 1915)
53. RGVIA, f. 2021, op. 1, d. 20, l. 9 (Vilna deportation stage [etapnyi] commander to the commander of the Northwest Front, 1 June 1915)
54. For an example of one such form see "Dokumenty o presledovanii," 256
55. GARF, f. 102, II deloproizvodstvo, op. 71, d. 123, l. 4
56. RGVIA, f. 1759, op. 3, d. 1422, ll. 22, 60-88
57. RGVIA, f. 1932, op. 12, d. 67, l. 290
58. RGVIA, f. 2005, op. 1, d. 80, ll. 670ob, 728
59. Cherniavsky, Prologue to Revolution, 56-74
60. Sovet Ministrov, 169, 204-5, 211-12
61. "'Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 233
62. "Dokumenty o presledovanii," 247
63. Lohr, "Enemy Alien," chap. 4
64. GARF, f. 9458, op. 1, d. 163, ll. 4-4ob. (Shadovo, Kovno province, n.d. [report submitted by a Shadovo resident to Duma deputy Bomash])
65. Duma deputy Bomash's files (GARF, f. 9458, op. 1) contain dozens of reports similar to the one summarized above
66. The following is based on reports of this type found in GARF, f. 9458, op. 1, d. 163
67. and "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 231-96
68. "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 218-19
69. On the problem of wartime inflation, with some discussion of its impact on relations between nationalities, see Iu. I. Kir'ianov, "Massovye vystupleniia na pochve dorogovizny v Rossii (1914-fevral' 1917 g.)," Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1993, no. 1:3-18
70. YIVO, New York, Mowshowitz Collection, 13197, 13200
71. F. Golczewski, Polnisch-Jüdische Beziehungen, 1881-1922 (Wiesbaden, 1981), 106-20
72. See Hans Rogger, "Conclusion and Overview," in Pogroms, 314-62
73. Edward H. Judge makes a similar point in his "Urban Growth and Anti-Semitism in Russian Moldavia," in Modernization and Revolution: Dilemmas of Progress in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Judge and James Y. Simms, Jr. (New York, 1992), 43-57
74. For a recent review of the pogroms in Ukraine see Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 109-40
75. RGIA, Pechatnaia zapiska 310, "Doklad po evreiskomu voprosu: Tsentral'nogo komiteta partii narodnoi svobody konferentsii delegatov partii i chlenov fraktsii sostoiavsheisia 6-8 iiun' 1915" (also published in "Iz 'chernoi knigi,'" 197-227)
76. See also Lohr, "Enemy Alien Politics," introduction
77. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 148-50
78. Steven J. Zipperstein, "The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Russian Jewish Communal Life during the First World War," Studies in Contemporary Jewry 4 (1988): 22-40
79. Sovet Ministrov, 163