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THE WORKERS' UNION AND THE JEWS 211union's last leaflet in Russian rather than Ukrainian because amongthe pogromists were many workers from Central Russia, while Ukrainiansliving in the cities were familiar with the Russian language. Toboth Russians and non-Russians zhid was not an emotionally neutralterm. 68Its use in the union's leaflet could only engender negativeassociations about Jews. Since most of those who participated in thepogroms undoubtedly acted on emotional impulse rather than out ofrational conviction, the use of zhid in the union's leaflet could not havefurthered the declared purpose of dampening inflamed anti-Jewishsentiment or of introducing some element of rationality.*The Russian word zhid, as a negative stereotype of the Jew, hadabsorbed various elements — religious, ethnic, economic, social, andpolitical. In the 1870s, in times of sharpened social contrasts, crisis inthe countryside, ferment among the peasantry, and accelerated capitalistdevelopment (especially in the Ukraine) in which Jews played apart, the notion of "Jewish exploitation" 69 became epitomized by thatsingle word. By that formulation the reactionary camp fostered animosityagainst the Jews as allegedly the single factor causing thecommon people's misery. The formula was also cited as the officialexplanation for the pogroms, for instance, by the prosecutor Strelnikovin the military court that tried some of the pogromists in Kiev.The regime's staunch opponents in the revolutionary camp alsoadopted the phrase "Jew exploiter" as a catchword for the moneyeconomy and a synonym for the entire Jewish community, althoughthe majority of it was laboring and pauperized. The public use of zhid,discussions on the same issue can be found in such different sources as KhrushchevRemembers (Boston and Toronto, 1970), pp. 144-45, and L. Plyushch, History'sCarnival: A Dissident's Autobiography (New York and London [1979]), pp. 163-67. In the 1920s some Soviet Ukrainian publications used ievrei instead of zhyd andboth terms were included in dictionaries. One can trace the issue up to recenttimes: see, for example, P. Koval'chuk, Antysemits'ka diialnist' ukrains'kykhnatsionalistiv (Kiev, 1965), and Voloshenko, Narysy.68Some sensitivity to this matter was evident in the first program drafted byKoval'skaia and Shchedrin. To exemplify the power of the bourgeoisie, it referredto a moneylender of Louis XIV and added "zhid" in quotation marks; Maksakovand Nevskii, Iuzhnorusskie rabochie soiuzy. Ellipses replaced the quoted word inthe text as reprinted in Pankratova, Rabochee dvizhenie ν Rossii, 2, pt. 2: 433.* Ed. note — Λ is just possible that Ivaniv used the general term zhid because it hadcurrency among the common people — both Ukrainians and the Russians living inthe Ukraine — to whom he was addressing the leaflet.69Dubnov, History of the Jews, pp. 264, 269-73, 347-48.