HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

THE WORKERS' UNION AND THE JEWS 201The formulators of the union's program threw hatred for Jews andPoles into one basket. Both ethnic groups figured in the geo-historicalsituation of the Ukraine in the latter half of the nineteenth century.But the galvanizing of anti-minority sentiments into disorders to foster"revolutionary outbursts" was then actually undertaken only in respectto the Jewish people. The passage was included under "politicalterror," not economic terror. Therefore one cannot ascribe the recommendationto the notion current in the 1870s among Russian narodnikiand Ukrainian socialists, as well as among pro-government Judophobes,that Jew-baiting was justified by "Jewish exploitation." On theother hand, there is no indication that fostering "disorders" out of thepopular hatred of Jews (or Poles) was regarded as a good end in itself,rather than as a useful revolutionary tactic.The idea of fomenting revolution through nationalistic disorders didnot occur in Kiev alone. It resounded at discussions in meetings of theChernyi peredel in St. Petersburg at the end of 1879. Koval'skaia andShchedrin took part in them, for the discussions were closely tied toAkselrod's attempt to reformulate the organization's program and torename it accordingly. All Chernyi peredel members agreed thatrevolutionary activity had to spring from the "people." But at the timeAkselrod opposed reliance on the people's alleged socialist ideals andaspirations, although it came from a Bakuninist tradition which Akselrodhimself long followed. He recalled questions he had posed duringone of the organization's internal discussions in St. Petersburg: "...what if the people want to beat the Jews (zhidov)? What if the peoplewant to prevent by force the separation of Poland from Russia?" 33Jews and Poles were grouped together, as in the program of the union,but here with more realistic discernment of the animosities against thetwo nationalities, respectively. By 1878 Akselrod had already departedsomewhat from pure populism. 34 He maintained a discriminatingoutlook toward "local popular movements," 35 a notion mentioned inhis memoirs and corroborated by a contemporary programmatic documentwhich he himself 36 probably wrote during efforts to organizeworkers in the Ukraine. 37 In it Akselrod contended that it was obliga-33Iz arkhiva P. B. Aksel'roda, 1881-1896 (Berlin, 1924), p. 343. Hereafter citedas Akselrod.34Venturi, Roots of Revolution, pp. 624-25.35Volk, Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 2:145-46, 167.36Volk, Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo, 2:347-48, 388-89 (fn. 169).37Mainly it concerned Odessa. There is confusion in the historiography about