Bloodbath on Freedom Day: Testimonies of Odesa Ambulance Doctors about the Victims of the Jewish Pogrom of October 18-21, 1905

Abstract

The events of the terrible Jewish pogrom of October 18-21, 1905 in Odesa have been almost completely unstudied by scholars and are superficially reflected in Ukrainian historiography. The study of the events of the pogrom allows us to assert that the provocations that preceded the pogrom were organized by both representatives of local authorities, police and military personnel, and revolutionaries (socialist-revolutionaries, anarchists), who sought to incite the population to a general uprising against the imperial government.

The article analyzes a unique historical source that has not been studied by historians – reports-testimonies of Odesa Ambulance Doctors (October-November 1905). These testimonies recorded cases when the pogrom began with the incitement of police officers to the Jewish population of Odesa, with the organization of crowds of so-called ‘orthodox demonstrators’ near police stations (by the leadership of these stations), some of whom, after a few hours, turned into pogromists. The ranks of the police, the army, and the administration hoped to have material and political gain from the upcoming pogrom, wanting to take revenge on the ‘revolutionaries’ for the political changes of October 1905 and attacks on police stations. It is possible to argue that the pogrom in Odesa began in the second half of October 18, 1905, with events both in the very center of the city and on its outskirts ‘Moldavanka’. A significant part of the so-called ‘orthodox demonstrators’ already on October 19, 1905. took part in the pogrom under the slogans ‘for faith, the tsar and the fatherland’. Part of the military of the imperial army, under the leadership of officers, helped the pogromists, shot at the ‘self-defence’, shelling peaceful neighbourhoods, covered the crowds of pogromists with military force, taking part in the looting during the pogrom. It can be argued that the pogrom in Odesa was organized by the city leadership, higher police ranks and individual military commanders of the city garrison.