massacred the population - behaved in full dignity until in turn they
were substituted by Zeleny's bands that immediately arranged a pogrom.
Later the unfortunate town was attacked by Sokolov's bands, after which
the Ukrainian troops again succeeded in restoring order for a short time.
Lubny escaped a pogrom thanks to the fact that a hundred men were found
in the Ukrainian ranks, who with their arms stood in the way of the
pogrommakers. Fourteen of the defenders fell in the fight but the town
was saved. While reading the story about Lubny in this part of the
report, I recalled the year 1905 when a City Committee of Defense was
organized in Lubny, which also saved the city from a pogrom.
Such facts were unknown in Denikin's army. Here the "guilty" of such
patronage and defense of Jews were punished with dismissal from their
posts.
The third feature, a very disadvantageous one for Denikin's army and
government, appears as a result of the comparison of the declarations by
the Ukrainian government on the Jewish question, of laws concerning
personal-national autonomy and Jewish Communities on the one hand, with
the clauses restricting the number of Jews in educational institutions as
well as in civil and military services in Denikin's empire - on the other
hand. Here, on the part of the Ukrainian government, an effort to draw
on representatives of Jews in all levels of government posts, and over
there - in Denikin's camp - removal of Jewish officers from the army, and
of Jewish officials from district and city offices. And this - in spite
of the fact that so many Jews joined voluntarily at the very beginning
Koltchak's and Denikin's armies. And how many Jews having been brought
up with a Russian culture died for Russia that had been always a
stepmother to them? On the other hand, how small a group of us, Jews,
joined the Ukrainian movement at the beginning of the second revolution!
Of course, there was nothing strange in it. Wilson's points had been
declared but recently, and the realization of the right of
self-determination by the Ukrainian people wa such a new and fresh event
that not only the average Jewish citizen, but also the intellectuals,
with few exceptions, did not digest or understand all that had happened.
But the fact remains, Jews were represented by a very considerable number
in the ranks both of the Bolsheviks and, at the beginning, of Denikin's
army. The Ukrainian movement was joined only by a few Jews.
The representatives of Russian and Jewish capital and heavy industry were
marching hand-in-hand with the Volunteer Armies of Denikin, Yudenitch,
and Koltchak. And even after all those pogroms committed by Denikin's
army, the Jewish capitalists and industrialists followed the call of his
successor Wrangel, and joined him
Finally, one more feature out of many others that distinguish the
Ukrainian Movement from that of Denikin: An anti-Jewish pogrom was openly
carried on in Kiev in the presence of Denikin's generals, Drahomirov and
Bredov. Never did happen anything like that, wherever the Directorate
set up headquarters, neither in Kiev, nor in Vynnytsia, nor in
Kamanets-Pololsk. The Kiev population knows from bitter experience the
difference between those two regimes.
Nevertheless, in spite of all these quite essential differences, here