HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

198 м. MiSHKiNSKYThe argument paralleled Drahomanov's widely known criticism of thecontemporary administrative label of the Ukraine as the southwesternregion of the Russian Empire.Among the workers in Kiev, recalls Koval'skaia, a sharp Judophobiawas current. The accession of the first Jew to the union evokedconfusion and then cold hatred among its rank and file members. Oneof them protested against the admittance of Jews, contending that"they murdered Jesus." The protestor was astonished when Koval'-skaia told him that Jesus himself was a Jew, and was reassured onlyafter his friend, a clergyman, corroborated that fact. In any case theintolerant atmosphere allegedly subsided and disappeared. Koval'-skaia attributes that to the purposeful reeducation of the union memberson religious and national superstitions, especially against strongJudophobia. According to Koval'skaia, these efforts bore fruit duringthe pogrom in Kiev in the spring of 1881, which will be discussedbelow. 23 But Koval'skaia's memoirs were written, for the most part, 24forty years and more after these events occurred. Some contemporarydocumentary evidence presents a less rosy and more complex andambivalent picture of the situation.After the union was disbanded, its historical records lay in oblivionfor decades. They were brought to light again only at the beginning ofthis century. Its founders and activists had experienced the martyrdomtypical of radical opponents of tsarist autocracy. Only two were stillalive: Koval'skaia, who was freed in 1900 after more than twenty yearsof imprisonment, hard labor, and exile and very soon joined theSocial-Revolutionaries (S-R's) ; and Nakhum Hecker, who came out ofhis ordeals severely crippled for life. 25In 1904 the Russian periodical dedicated to the history of therevolutionary movement, By loe, edited by Vladimir Burtsev, pubkratiia,"originally published in 1881). It seems likely that the union was named soas to distinguish it from the "Iuzhno-rossiiskii soiuz rabochikh," which was foundedin Odessa in 1875.23Venturi cites the relevant passage from Koval'skaia's memoirs without comment;Roots of Revolution, p. 520.24In 1904 Koval'skaia recalled, in brief, the reaction within the union to the 1881pogrom (see fn. 26, below), but did not place it in the context of the union'seducational work, which reportedly took place later.25Venturi (Roots of Revolution, p. 523) knew of only one survivor — Koval'-skaia. She joined the S-R Maximalists who, together with some anarchist factions,continued in the union tradition, after a fashion.