Tag #146595 - Interview #78224 (Lev Khapun)

In 1905, they say, there was a big Jewish pogrom. It's not true that the government didn't fight against pogroms. When there was a pogrom in Vinnitsa and Berdichev, the tsarist government sent Cossacks [1], either from Don or Kuban, to suppress the pogrom-makers. Cossacks were heavily built men and behaved conceitedly towards the local population. For instance, they came to the smithy because they also needed to shoe their horses. Cossacks believed that they had a privileged status. They bumped into my uncles, or, to be more precise, grand-uncles. A conversation started and, since they behaved haughtily, they were verbally refused. A scuffle began. There were twelve Cossacks with horses, harness, weapons; and the blacksmiths were fewer in number. But when the brawl began, they beat those Cossacks up so badly that the latter weren't able to leave on their own. The Cossacks complained about it to their officer. The colonel started an investigation. Since it wasn't possible to talk to the beaten, he had to wait for some time.

I know about this incident from what my father told me. He was a small boy at the time (he was only seven years old), and he could not have seen it all, but he knew the story very well. The policemen visited the colonel, saw the beaten and started an inquest in order to punish those bandits who had beaten up the Cossacks. But the blacksmiths escaped. There was this village fool in Vinnitsa. He was short, weak and a bit twisted. The police and the Cossacks looked for the guilty but couldn't find them. At that time it was impossible not to reveal a crime.

So they caught the village fool and brought him to the colonel. The colonel said, 'What kind of Cossacks I have, that such shabby Jew men can get the better of them?' He turned out that guy and closed the case. The Cossacks suppressed that pogrom, so it cannot be simply said that the tsarist government welcomed the pogroms.