"A Dishonor to You and to the Church": Patriarch Tikhon, Pogroms, and the Russian Revolution, 1917–19

Abstract

"A Dishonor to You and to the Church"Patriarch Tikhon, Pogroms, and the Russian Revolution, 1917–19 Francesca Silano (bio) In the summer of 1919, the Russian Civil War was in its bloodiest phase. The Volunteer Army, a faction of the anti-Bolshevik White Army, had steadily gathered strength over the spring. It had won a string of victories in the southwest region of the former Russian Empire, gaining territories that had previously been conquered by the Bolshevik Red Army.1 The chaos that had overtaken huge swaths of the former empire was magnified in these months as White Army troops began taking reprisals against the inhabitants of the territories formerly occupied by the Red Army. By August, antiBolshevik forces, including White Army units and Ukrainian nationalist forces, had begun perpetrating mass pogroms in Ukrainian territories that were quantitatively and qualitatively different from the anti-Jewish violence that had previously taken place in Russia or Europe as a whole.2 In July 1919, even before the outbreak of organized pogroms, Patriarch Tikhon, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, strongly condemned both the violence of the Civil War in general, and the pogroms specifically, [End Page 5] in one of his few public messages of the year.3 "Remember," he warned his Orthodox Christian readers, "pogroms are a dishonor to you and a dishonor to the Holy Church!" He condemned such violence as posing a demonic challenge to Christians, tempting them from the path of good to that of evil, thus putting their souls at risk. The patriarch also argued that the pogroms were representative of a general "misanthropy" (chelovekonenavistnichestvo) that had overtaken Russia since the beginning of the civil war. The trials of war, disease, and deprivation, he claimed, had led to a degradation in human relations that was destroying the country and the people. The patriarch insisted that this misanthropy had been fostered by the atheism that was inherent to Bolshevik ideology. By condemning religion, Tikhon argued, the Bolsheviks were condemning citizens of the former Russian Empire to fall victim to the base passions and violent instincts that religion in general—and Orthodoxy specifically—could have helped to curb.4 Historians have pointed to a number of factors that contributed to antisemitic violence in the early years of the revolution. Peter Kenez has argued that, in the absence of a unifying ideology, antisemitism became a central tenet of White Army ideology.5 White propaganda often identified Bolshevism with Jewry and blamed Jews for Bolshevik attacks on the Orthodox Church and its property.6 Moreover, the fact that Jews, who had previously been largely restricted from participating in civic life, were now taking up key positions in the new government, was threatening to White Army leaders.7 Longstanding tensions between Jews and their neighbors in the areas in which pogroms occurred, combined with years of chaos and privation generated by World War I, provided fertile ground for the White Army's propaganda.8 These same tensions could, and did, lead perpetrators of pogroms to participate in violence against Jews.9 [End Page 6] At the same time, the end of World War I and the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires had precipitated immense confusion in Eastern Europe as Poles, Balts, and Ukrainians sought their independence. These nationalist forces, who also fought among the Red and White armies for control of pieces of the former empires, had their own histories of tension and violence with Jews. Indeed, during Russia's Civil War, all participants were in some way responsible for violence against Jews in this area—including the Red Army, Bolshevik supporters, Polish troops, and various bands of fighters led by warlords.10 Through the experience of total war, moreover, perpetrators of pogroms had learned "new forms of extreme violence that tapered the inhibition to kill and witness murder."11 Scholars generally claim that a long history of Russian Orthodox Christian antisemitism helped to stoke the pogroms.12 Although eyewitnesses of the pogroms during the Civil War report cases of Orthodox clergy both spurring on pogroms and trying to restrain people from participating in violence against Jews, there currently exist no studies dedicated exclusively to the role...