Antisemitism in Ukraine - Between The World Wars

Between The World Wars

Between 1918 and 1921, there were 1236 violent incidents against Jews in 524 towns in Ukraine. The estimates of the number of killed range between 30,000 and 60,000. Of the recorded 1,236 pogroms and excesses, 493 were carried out by the Petlura's soldiers, 307 by independent Ukrainian warlords, 213 by Denikin's Army, 106 by the Red Army and 32 by the Polish Army.

1500 Jews were killed in Proskurov in February 1919, by a brigade of UNR troops. In Tetiev on March 25 1919, 4000 Jews were murdered by Cossack troops under the command of Colonels Cherkovsky, Kurovsky and Shliatoshenko.

During the Russian Civil War the Jews of Uman were subjected to two pogroms in 1919, as the town changed hands several times. There were 170 victims in the first pogrom in spring and more than 90 in the second one in summer. This time the Christian inhabitants helped to hide the Jews. The Council for Public Peace, with a Christian majority and a Jewish minority, saved the city from danger several times. In 1920, for example, it stopped the pogrom initiated by the troops of General Denikin.

The propaganda organs of the Communist Party attempted to put the blame of all the Jewish pogroms on Symon Petlura. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine prepared a special document in order to compromise Petlura in the Schwartzbard court case. However, some modern sources claim that the white Volunteer Army was the main perpetrator of pogroms, and some were instigated by the Directory's forces, esp. the irregular otaman-led groups. The Red Army was also responsible for some pogroms.

The Jewish community had undergone significant losses in the period of the Russian revolution. Many documents dealing with the pogroms however had not been made available and indeed had been deliberately concealed from the public in the Soviet era anti-semitic climate. These documents have remained hidden until recently - being discovered in the Ukrainian State Archives by the Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Serhiychuk.

Study of the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine (formerly the Ukrainian KGB) has shown that the government of the UNR directed by Petlura had no connection to the organization of Jewish pogroms in Ukraine. In fact the Directoria from its very conception fought against pogroms, but its power was limited, even in the territory under its control.

When the Tsentralna Rada proclaimed the III Universal in November 1917, the Russian Army initiated a pogrom in Uman in southern Ukraine.

During the dictatorship of Pavlo Skoropadsky, whose government made overtures towards rejoining Russia, no pogroms were recorded. When Skoropadsky’s government was replaced by the Directoria and Ukraine once again launched itself in a direction towards independence, pogroms once again erupted.

The Ukrainian government immediately reacted to the acts of violence which happened in January 1919 in Zhytomyr and Berdychiv. The Ukrainian government informed the Jewish leaders and the government of Berdichev on January 10 that the instigators were shot, and the army squadron which took part in the action was disbanded. The head of the government Volodymyr Vynnychenko stated that the pogrom actions were initiated by the Black Hundreds. He also stated: “the Ukrainian government will actively fight anti-Semitism and all occurrences of Bolshevism.”

The pro-Bolshevik delegate of the Bund Moisei Rafes, who initially stated that “the special detachment that was sent to Zhytomyr and Berdychev to fight the Soviets initiated a pogrom” later in a speech at the meeting of the Labour Congress of Ukraine on January 16, 1919 changed his mind: “The Directoria states that it is not to blame, that it is not to blame for the pogroms. None of us blames the Directoria for the responsibility of the pogroms”.

Symon Petlura made attempts to stop the occurrence of pogroms among Ukrainian detachments. When he discovered from the Minister of Jewish affairs of the UNR that the transiting squadron at the Yareska station had initiated violent acts against the Jewish population, he immediately sent a telegram to the military commandant of Myrhorod: “I command that the matter be investigated and reported back to me, and to use immediate measures so that similar excesses do not have a place and will be punished – 28 January – Head Otaman S. Petlura.

When Petlura took charge of the Directoria, at his initiative the government investigated the Jewish pogroms in Kamianets-Podilskyi and Proskuriv demanding the commanders “use decisive actions to totally liquidate the pogromist anti-Jewish actions, and the perpetrators are to be brought before a military tribunal and punished according to the military laws of war”.

Had Petlura’s policies been different, then the representatives of the Jewish population at a meeting which took place July 17, 1919, would never have told Petlura that they supported him and the building of a Ukrainian State. A representative of the Jewish party Poale Zion, Drakhler, told Petlura: “We understand, having enough facts, that the Zhytomyr and Berdichev pogroms took place as acts against the (Ukrainian) government. Immediately after the Zhytomyr pogrom the Russian and Polish Black Hundred members boasted 'The planned pogroms had worked extremely well, and will bring an end to Ukrainian aspirations'”. Drakhler continued: “I am deeply convinced that not only we, but all Jewish democracy in its activities will take active participation in the struggle to free Ukraine. And in the rows of the army the Jewish Cossack hand in hand will fight, carrying its blood and life onto the altar of national and social freedom in Ukraine”.

Petlura replied to the Jewish delegates that he would use “the strength of all my authority to remove the excesses against the Jews, which are obstacles to our work of establishing our statehood”.

The attitude to the Jews and pogroms in Ukraine was totally different in the Volunteer Russian Army led by Denikin. In a special memorandum sent to the Central Committee for Jewish Aid who had suffered in the Pogroms at the end of 1919 he stated: “The politics of general Denikin regarding these deceitful people (all Jewish Bolsheviks), is that they are in the dark, an invisible mass, responsible for the disgusting rows of cruelty and pogroms, which have no boundary”.

One document states in reference to the pogrom of Kyiv “When General Dragomirov, known for his liberalism, had to leave Kiev because of the Bolshevik offensive, turned to his officers (recorded in a stenogram) with the following words: “My friends, you know, as much as I do, the reasons for our temporary failures on the Kievan front. When you, my heroic and never dying eagles, retake Kiev, I grant you the possibility to take revenge on the grubby Jews”.

When Denikin’s Volunteer army retook Kiev it inflicted robbery and murder on the civilian population. Over 20,000 people died in two days of violence. After these events, the representative of the Kharkiv Jewish Community, Mr. Suprasskin, spoke to General Shkuro, who stated to him bluntly, that “Jews will not receive any mercy because they are all Bolsheviks”

The Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic in a communication with the governments of the Antanta dated October 7, 1919 stated: “Especially disgusting are the violent acts by the representatives of General Denikin on the Jews, which along the roads taken by his army, instigate unimaginable pogroms, which by their size, brutality and obscenity have surpassed all other excess that we have had at any time in any place on the Ukrainian terrain”.

Other historians have claimed that Petlura himself did not have any history of antisemitism, and that he actively sought to stop anti-Jewish violence on numerous occasions, finally introducing capital punishment for the crime of pogroming.

Historian Taras Hunczak of Rutgers University concludes in his study Symon Petliura and the Jews: A Reappraisal (1985): "...to convict Petliura for the tragedy that befell Ukrainian Jewry is to condemn an innocent man and to distort the record of Ukrainian-Jewish relations" (p 33). Because the USSR saw Petlura and Ukrainian nationalism as a threat, it was in its interest to blacken his reputation and mounted a propaganda campaign including accusing him of anti-Jewish crimes. Hunczak insists that "Petliura's own personal convictions render such responsibility highly unlikely, and all the documentary evidence indicates that he consistently made efforts to stem pogrom activity by UNR troops."

In 1921 Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, signed an agreement with Maxim Slavinsky, Petlura's representative in Prague, regarding the formation of a Jewish gendarmerie which would accompany Petliura’s putative invasion of Ukraine and protect the Jewish population from pogroms. The agreement did not materialize and Jabotinsky was heavily criticized by most Zionist groups. Nevertheless he stood by the agreement and was proud of it.

In 1927, the Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard assassinated Symon Petlura, head of the Ukrainian government-in-exile, in Paris. Schwartzbard fully admitted to the crime, citing revenge as his motive. His defence, led by the French lawyer Henri Torres, focused on Petlura's alleged responsibility for the 1919–1920 pogroms in Balta in which Schwartzbard had previously lost all members of his family. Schwartzbard was eventually acquitted. This acquittal soured Jewish-Ukrainian relations in the West.