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THE WORKERS' UNION AND THE JEWS 215of the pogrom, which happened on April 23? The reasons might havebeen hesitation about what stand to take, anticipation of an optimalmoment for diverting the pogrom into a general revolution, or evenpractical exigencies.At the end of the 1870s — years of intensified anti-Jewish agitationforeshadowing pogroms — the Russian revolutionary press was almostsilent about the Jewish situation in general and the rising hatredof Jews in particular. All the more significant, then, is the informationabout attitudes toward Jews within the Southern-Russian Workers'Union. While keeping in mind the union's anti-pogrom stance duringthe crucial Kiev pogrom, one should also consider the other attitudesthat were expressed in its publications and activities. Already in 1880Drahomanov warned that "in the face of the present relations betweenthe Ukrainian people and the Jews it is foreseeable that every movementof the first [against the existing economic order of affairs] will befollowed by bloody scenes of Jew-beating, even more unjust than theevents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." 76 In the wake ofthe pogroms Drahomanov remarked, "The anti-Jewish pogrom in theUkraine took the socialists there unawares — most of them, havingbeen distracted by abstract formulas and centralist concerns, wereunprepared to understand the local social-national relations in theirconcrete forms." 77Therefore, as Drahomanov assessed the situation,no attempt was made to set "a new rational course" for the popularmovement manifested in the pogroms. 78Drahomanov's statementsrequire an addendum. 79 Aside from a misunderstanding of nationalproblems in general and the conditions in the Ukraine in particular,76Drahomanov, Sobrante, 1:234.77Drahomanov, Sobranie, 1:235.78This seems, in a sense, to be what Ivaniv tried to do, although Drahomanov didnot know about it. In an article written later (May 1882) Drahomanov referredrepeatedly to the pogrom in Kiev, and cited a lengthy letter from Kiev. Herepeated the call for solidarity between Ukrainian and Jewish workingmen againstall oppressors and exploiters: see "Ukrains'ki seliany ν nespokiini roky (1880-1882)," in Hromada: Ukrains'ka zbirka, no. 5 (1882), pp. 242-58. Nonetheless,Drahomanov's attitude right up to the outbreak of the pogroms in the Ukraine wasquite different in spirit, as is evident from his article in the Pall Mall Gazette, citedby the New York Times on 11 May 1881, p. 1. On the problem of the eventualdiversion of the pogrom in Kiev against all capitalists, see the utterances ofAkselrod as cited in A. Ascher, Pavel Axelrod and the Development of Menshevism(Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 71-72.79The evolution of Drahomanov's own positions on the Jewish question before,during, and after the pogroms, requires separate comprehensive discussion.