Odessa and "Pogrom"

[James A. Landau]

Jewish Encyclopedia, volume IX (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905) article on
"Odessa":

page 377 column 1
"[Odessa] has been an important factor in the cultural life of the Jews of
Russia.  It is believed that when the Russians took possession in 1789 of the
Turkish fortress of Khadzhi-Bel---named Odessa in 1794---Jews were already
living in the place....in 1795 the Jewish population had increased to 240
persons of both sexes.  Most of them came from Volhynia, Podolia, and
Lithuania.  Later on Jews arrived from Galicia and Germany...The Galician and
German Jews were styled "Broder" Jews, after the city of Brody."

page 378 column 1
     "The community did not escape the horrors of the pogrom.  Indeed, the
very first pogrom in Russia occurred in Odessa in the year 1859.  This was in
reality not a Russian but a Greek pogrom; for the leaders and almost all of
th participants were [column 2] Greek sailors from ships in the harbor, and
local Greeks who joined them.  The pogrom occurred on a Christian Easter; and
the local press, in no wiise unfriendly to the Jews, attempted to transform
it into an accidental fight, the Greek colony at that time being dominant in
the administration as well as in the commerce of Odessa.  Further pogroms
occurred in 1871, 1881, and 1886."

Also volume X (1905) article "Russia" page 527 column 1:
"The prevailing ignorance in foreign countries concerning these terible
conditions was due largely to the suppression by the censorship of any
mention in the Russian newspapers of the brutal acts of the police.  But
isolated notices which found their way into the foreign press created a wave
of indignation throughout Europe, and forced even Pobiedonostzev
[procurator-general, appointed 1880] to make apologetic explanations.  In an
interview with Arnold White he declared that "everybody was sorry for the
brutality of the chief of police in Moscow."  It is well known, however, that
the latter official merely carried out the instructions of Grand Duke
Sergius, who himself applied in practice Pobiedonostzev's teachings.
Speaking of these, the historian Mommsen said (Nov. 1, 1903): "Is it not
possible to arrest the decay of a greatly vaunted civilization, the suicde of
Russia?...But we may still hope that the statement of a great empire and the
sovereign arbiter of Europe may no longer be dominated by the blind action of
a resuscitated Torquemada."

Both the above articles were written by Herman Rosentahl, "Chief of the
Slavonic Department of the New York Public Library"