The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia

On the same day that the October Manifesto is made law, protestors gather before the Moscow jail and demand political prisoners be released. They joyfully find that “the jail doors opened” (68). As the peaceful, celebratory crowds return to the city center, they are attacked by the Union of Russian People; one prisoner is killed and dozens injured. This Union, also called the Black Hundred, is dedicated to upholding the tsar’s power, and as such attacks anyone they view as a threat, including students, workers, and particularly Jews.

Tsar Nicholas himself supports the Black Hundred’s “rabid” anti-Jew campaign (69), and in just the two weeks following the October Manifesto, 694 pogroms take place across Russia. Acting on a long legacy of royal prejudice against Jews, Nicholas blames Jewish Russians for the political uprising and declares that “‘the Yids […] must be kept in their places’” (69). Here, the author inserts a direct report from journalist Vladimir Kishinev, who investigated a pogrom in 1903. Kishinev describes the Jewish people trying to escape a vicious mob by hiding in a particular house; most were unsuccessful, with one man “‘finished […] off with sticks and clubs’” (72), and three more with crowbars.

Fleming goes on to introduce the “true revolutionaries” of the early 1900s (74), a group of social democrats who speak out against the tsar, and in favor of Karl Marx’s communist ideals, from their place of exile in Switzerland.