*CORRECTIONS:* 1. The prayer for the head of state is part of the Saturday morning service, not the Friday evening service. It also isn't performed at all in Israel. But I know you're wondering, and if it was, it would be for the President and not the Prime Minister. And yes, this is why I was being uncharacteristically reverent when the Queen died. 2. Something else that may have contributed to Chinese-Jewish-American allyship is that Chinese immigrants _also_ suffered horrendous pogroms in the United States. Before the 1880s, every town on the West Coast (including mine) had a Chinatown, and only the five that survive today weren't destroyed by race riots. 3. The NAACP did have Jewish founders, Henry Moskowitz and Anna Strunsky, but Schiff and Wise weren't brought on until 1914 after being invited onboard by Columbia Professor and Bull Moose Joel Springarn. 4. 24:55 I said "British refugees" instead of "Jewish refugees." But hey, they were British once they got there.
The Queen was a grandma and a great grandmother, you never know who reads this and I would not want to add to their grief. I still can't believe some people were joking about her corpse...give them at least a year to grief for goodness sake....😔
@@gyllenspetzfamily7993 She lived a life of extravagant luxury while people starved and struggled in the streets. You really can't understand why people didn't care or mocked her at all?
It is true that the prayer "He who gives salvation to Kings..." is not said in Israel. That is because the prayer also contains a subtle prayer for the Jews to be saved from the evil sword of the duplicitous foreign government. (Psalms 144:10 is the source of the opening line. Vs 11 is the direct plea for help.) Religious Zionist Jews in Israel and the Diaspora do pray for the government and its ministers, but with a different prayer which recognizes the redemptive nature of the state, rather than asking God to redeem us from the state. (Incidentally, the prayer refers to God as צור ישראל, the intentionally ambivalent term used in the Declaration of Independence.) Thank you again for the engagement and corrections.
"Working under the new Emperor Nikolai II, the Russian cabinet had successfully presented an image of the Russian military as not only the largest in the world but the strongest; exactly the type of existential threat to the West that Nikolai’s forebears had dreamed of creating. In reality, the Russian military of 1903 was the weakest among the Great Powers: the least disciplined, the least coordinated, with extremely low morale and no training whatsoever for urban environments like Kishinev." - such crazy era, imagine such a thing happening in our time.
Don't forget that it was always a Russian (and Soviet) military strategy to throw as many as possible soldiers to the frontlines as human shields, until they win. There is currently a massive project in Russia. Russia's ministery of digital development, are working on a massive program. A mass "digital mobilization". They intend to recruit half a million men from minority groups, periphery, the poor, political dissidents, criminals and disenfranchised communities Via something similar to the Chinese social credit system that tracks after the citizens' information. Why specifically them? People who "won't be missed" when they die in a war. People whom their death won't raise social disconnect, so they wouldn't need to violently suppress more demonstrations.
Great episode. The Uganda Scheme is one of those plans that initially sounds so bizarre it's hard to believe it was real. And good lord, the origins of the Protocols is even more unhinged than I thought.
Depressing to know that 120 years later nothing changed. The horrors, the violence, the justifications, the whataboutism, people still use the same language
4:32 I'll never understand how Christians can look at Christs example and the many messages in the Bible about revenge being pointless, and then having this notion of 'avenging' Jesus.
I wonder if the absolute monarch in Saint Petersburg drew inspiration from his counterpart in Constantinople and/or vice versa? Because I find it so interesting how the systematic genocidal purges perpetrated against Jews and Circassians in the Russian Empire in the late 1800s and early 1900s mirrored the systematic genocidal purges perpetrated against the Christian subjects of the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. These events and policies in the two "Black Sea Empires" are the main reason why countries from Argentina to Australia have such large populations of Ashkenazi Jews, Armenians and Greeks today (well that, and also things like poverty and technology). Also, I'd just like to say that I very much appreciate this channel's commitment to historical accuracy when showing maps and flags! 💟 Even if this is a minor detail, it nonetheless irks me a bit whenever I discover cartographic or vexillological anachronisms in the content of YT channels that I follow and admire. Oh well. :)
Pavel Krushevan as the author of "The Protocols" is new to me. I've always known that the most accepted theory is that "The Protocols" were created by Sergey Golovitsin by the orders of the boss of Tzatists Ochrancha in Paris - Pyotr Rachkovsky. And so Golovitsin copied whole sections from "The Dialogue" of Joly. And also, I think, it's clear that behind Krushevan was the Musscovian state and the Ochrancha, so I would not grant him with the infamous honor of creating "The Protocols" which could easily be the most evil book created by a human. Apart from that, today I found that channel and since I love history I instantly fell in love with it. Those are great history videos! Thank you very much, I learn a lot from your channel @SamAronow.
I thought this video was your best. And very timely because of your references to founding NAACP board members Jacob Schiff and R. Stephen Wise. People need to know the history of Jewish support for Black civil rights especially now when so many Black folks are uncritically gravitating to the Palestinian cause.
It's funny how 120 years later, the outlook on Russia by a VAST majority of nations is the same as in this video. (Also it is not beyond my attention that the start of this video begins... in what is now Ukraine.) History my not repeat... but it sure as hell rhymes.
"with Britain itself being the second most popular destination for British refugees" - Sam, not sure if you can fix? Obvious you meant Jewish but still a small mistake
It is rare that a video brings me to tears, but I couldn’t help but grieve. I have a history with the pogroms, and I am the great great grandchild of survivors of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War in Ukraine (The Petliura ones, I believe. Viva Svarzbard!) I want to thank you for covering these events. It hurts like hell to remember, but we have a duty to know what has been done to our people, and to prevent it from occurring again. I have started learning Yiddish, half for my bubbie and Zayde and half out of a sense of defiance. The Jewish people yet live.
"Every Friday night in the synagogue, the rabbi would recite a prayer for the emperor." The standard practice is to say this prayer during the morning service. Thank you for the great video!
I’ve read the comment several times before that “Russia is never as strong as it seems nor as weak as it appears to be.” I guess it’s part of their military doctrine also, to mask things with appearances.
Excellent video as always. I am the great grandson of a survivor of the Kishinev Pogrom and I wonder something that I’ve never seen any sources on - Moldova (as we call it now) was historically one of the countries which had both Ashkenazim and Sephardim. How integrated (or not) were their communities, and did they have any differing experiences with the violence and politics of the time? Thanks
I remember reading a 1966 book by Norman Cohn called "Warrant for Genocide" and a 2003 graphic novel by Will Eisner called "The Plot". Both explored the impact of the infamous Protocols but while in the first there was a shade of mystery regarding the identity of the Protocols' author, in the second one, Eisner mentioned how recent research (1990s) exposed the role of Matvei Golovinski and the Okhrana in the forgery. Now I realize there was a bigger (and more infamous) player, in the person of Pavel Krushevan, in this plot against Jews.
Yeah, the degree of high-level government complicity in the pogroms was consistently overstated until more information became available after the Cold War. Even I’ve fallen prey to that in my video on the May Laws. Of course, the government of the time consistently put out the line that it was justified, but they’d certainly have preferred not to lose the state monopoly on violence. That changes, of course, when the form of government changes from absolute monarchy to a system with political parties…
@@SamAronow Somehow I am remindered of that strange scene in 'Crime and Punishment' where Katerina Ivanovna seems to think a direct appeal to the 'merciful Tsar' can solve the injustices fate placed up her. This came from an ideological programme that was well sunk in among the peasant and working classes of the unbesmirched monarch who just knew what was right for the masses without irony. It was in some ways the Persian model of imperial absolutism (down to the crown that replaced the Greco-Roman laurel) that Sassanid Persians had imported to Rome after the crisis of the 3rd century made the pseudo-monarch of the first half of the Empire untenable. The whole ideology of Byzantine inspired Cesaropapism in Russia required a kind of quasi-religious sense of the perfection of the monarch which meant the actual decrepid and collapsing state of the Russian empire could only be blamed on the incompetent conniving bureaucracy (that were in many cases semi-feudal inhereted positions) or by some darker conspiracy. The Tsar always remained aloof... at least until the chaos of 1905 and then the FIrst World War made it untenable. The bloated class of disgruntled minor aristocrats like Pavel Krushevan probably had the most to gain in channelling the increasinly uncontrollable discontent away from them and their nepotistic corruption and mismanagement to the classic scapegoats of the Russian ultras. It's no coicidence in my opinion that Lenin and Krushevan both came from the same impoverished minor ethic aristocracy of the provinces, both had the same underlying grievance with the status quo just with vastly different expressions of their desire to overturn it.
Hollow Knight and the Russo-Japanese War are two things I never thought would be associated with each other but here we are listening to the prelude of the war with Lace playing in the background in a video about Jewish history
When I was in law school in New York, the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association put on a cultural food day as a fundraiser. I remember as we were serving the food, one of our Jewish classmates declaring "THIS is the food of the Jewish people!" as he scooped up a plate of General Tso's chicken.
I am kind of ashamed that I never knew about such a horrible tragedy before watching this video thanks for shedding light on something I never learned about before
Hey Sam! Such an important look at history! I was wondering if you could let me know about the sources used to identify Asheville on the list of cities in which Jewish protests occurred to raise money for support of Russian Jews. As a Jew that lives nearby I would be ecstatic to learn more about the local history, and I’ve had trouble finding it online.
Philip Ernest Schoenberg "The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903" _American Jewish Historical Quarterly,_ Vol. 63, No. 3 Page 269 www.jstor.org/stable/23877915
A century had passed, but we russians still cling onto stupid notion of "tsar is good, boyars are bad" and "if only tsar knew". I hope we can change this one day.
Or, perhaps, a well-armed minority community that doesn't have to rely on government policy to protect them. The Kishinev Pogrom was illegal. You can't just wil "rule of law" into existence.
My mother's father was in the Russian army at the time. A "sergeant," an unusual attainment for a Jew, my mother told me. My grandfather might have witnessed first hand the ineffectiveness of the army in Kishinev. (My grandparents never talked about the old country.) Possibly that, plus the Japanese war, plus the other chaos of 1905, prompted him to desert by stolen boat on a moonless night and come to America. He settled in Boston, where there developed a Bessarabian Society, which my mother used to call the "cousins club." My grandfather sent for his wife and daughter in 1907.
You're such a great storyteller. As I am learning a lot of this information for the first time, your ability to keep major historical plot points and characters obscure until the perfect emotional/historical transition never ceases to shock me. Perfect example: the revelation that Pavel Krushevan, who up until this point in your video was just a moderately successful antisemitic Russian journalist, was at least the coauthor of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had my jaw hit the floor while watching. It really helped pull together a lot of loosely connected characters and historical moments into a much clearer and larger picture. Your ability to not only convey history but to do it in an entertaining and engaging way is truly a special skill.
@@SamAronow it's a matter of basic self defense and protecting the weak. Those filthy Kishinev rape gangs could have learned what a gatling gun was and I don't think a single woman in the country would have objected. But was that even possible? I know the first thing the bolsheviks did was take the guns but could the average person even get one into Russia pre-1918?
@@SamAronow I'm speaking as an American who appreciates sun tzu's the art of war and Mike Tyson's statement about getting punched in the face.🥴😒 So are you saying that a well armed and disciplined militia could not have provided cover for folks to flee? I'm not talking about establishing a defensible situation I'd just want to granny and the kids out and melt into the countryside. Then honestly just get out of Russia. 🤔😑
@@gyllenspetzfamily7993 Difficult to do in a country where 87% of the population is rural and Jews were almost entirely banned from living in rural areas; also a country with internal passport checks.
"with Britain itself being the second most popular destination for British refugees" you meant Jewish refugees 24:50 also wow I had no idea on the scale of that pogrom it isn't that well taught in schools here
He also blamed Jews for the Second Boer War. But at the same time he was _righteously_ furious at his countrymen who launched their own pogrom in Limerick just a year after this.
@@SamAronow started by a priest and euphemistically called a “boycott” if I’m right I saw on twitter a few months ago you were reading about Jewish Ireland, I’m curious what the relationship was between our Jewish community and various elements of the Catholic and nationalist cultures of this era
A sideline of the Jewish sports clubs: the boxers and wrestlers would form street patrols to protect the neighborhood from antisemitic muggers. One of them used this experience to develop Krav Maga in postwar Israel.
Really appreciate all your videos! Just wanted to say that, sadly, being from "the Progressive wing of the Democratic party" in the early 20th century context would have been fairly consistent with later being a Nazi sympathiser - roughly the opposite of today, obviously!
I really dislike how in many portrayals of him, in remembering the murder of Nicholas II and his family by the Bolsheviks, popular culture often overlooks his vicious anti-semitism, which often took the form of turning the other way (or even encouraging through organisations like the Black Hundreds) pogroms like Kishiniev, Kyiv and Odessa, which were bad even by the standards of the time. Some of Nicholas' personal correspondence regarding Jewish people are a huge yikes. This results in popular culture painting a way more sympathetic picture of the man than he deserves, whereas aside from his qualities as a family man, he was also very incompetent as a ruler (while at the same time stubbornly refusing to give up autocracy) and even vicious against certain groups he was prejudiced against.
I don't normally like to judge people based on one thing, but belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories basically tells you all you need to know about a person. It's never someone's only serious character flaw - it always comes with other issues.
It's also kinda the last step. Who is it lately who says "all conspiracy theories end in antisemitism?" Unless of course you're Israeli, in which case you've never experienced being a minority and thus never learned to read the dogwhistles. Which may be a healthy thing for a society in the long run, but it's very frustrating right now.
From what I've read in history and what I've seen in person, the most hardcore believers in antisemitism (I call them this way because of their cult-like beliefs) are oftenly delusional people who try to justify their mediocrity or utter incompetence by using an unfortunately too common scapegoat.
True. And it is often the first thing those people want to talk to me about! Because I have a noticable German accent. In some sense that is convenient.
Maybe I'm being too proactive, perhaps paranoid, but it'd be a shame if Sam had to close the comments section if a certain kind of people caught wind of this great video. Maybe the community should form a sort of city watch aimed to mass report any aggressive commenter
You sound exactly like my mom. But if worst comes to worst, I'll freeze the comments. I've done that with a few of my videos that seem to exceptionally trigger antisemites (Alexandra, Medieval England, Colonial America, Ethiopia).
@@SamAronowI've been told I'm too overzealous, but to be compared with a Jewish mother makes me feel validated! I hope everything gets better in Israel, greetings from Mexico
I'm left as shit, but Jabotinsky > Ben-Gurion. I went through the same "oh, turns out I hate this guy" research phase with DBG as I did with Herzl. Lib-left Zionism should have been the way. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and A.D. Gordon knew what was up.
25:40 Jewish Science Fiction author Lavie Tidhar wrote several alternate history stories in his anthology series Hebrewpunk and a full novel Unholy Land, where Herzl managed to convince the Zionists to establish a Jewish homeland in Uganda. I'm surprised more people weren't for it. Considered this was before world war I where the sentiments of colonialism and love of empire hadn't yet died out.
Thank you for this video, I don't believe I ever learned about the origins of the The Protocols or about the pogrom in Kishinev, this was very enlightening.
~20:40 Sam repeats a section from the Bund video about Lenin and Martov's divide with only minor changes and leaves in an error, so let me copy-past part of my correction from that video here: Lenin didn't think Russia could "establish Communism at any time," the divide between he and Martov was over who the primary allies of the Social Democrats would be in a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" against the monarchy, which both saw as a necessary precursor to the establishment of Socialism; Martov thought that the Bourgeoisie needed to be a central force in this Revolution, based on the precedence of the French Revolution, while Lenin thought that Russia lacked a Revolutionary Bourgeoisie due to the specifics of their economy, and that the workers and peasants (led by the Socialists) would thus need to overthrow the Tsar themselves. Lenin did not (at least at this stage) believe that Russia could transition to Communism by itself; as an orthodox Marxist, he held to the belief that the material conditions of Capitalism had to precede Communism. Instead, he believed that a "bourgeois-democratic" Revolution by the workers and peasants in Russia would provide motivation and support for Socialist revolutions in developed Capitalist countries like Germany and France.
Very good comment. It's an erroneous way to characterize both the divide between in the RSDLP as well as Lenin's outlook. As Trotsky (positioned originally in-between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks) later described it: "In accordance with its immediate tasks, the Russian Revolution is a bourgeois revolution. But the Russian bourgeoisie is anti-revolutionary. The victory of the Revolution is therefore possible only as a victory of the proletariat. But the victorious proletariat will not stop at the programme of bourgeois democracy: it will go on to the programme of socialism. The Russian Revolution will become the first stage of the Socialist world revolution."
My father's father was born in Kishinev. A lad of 18, my grandfather in 1900 left for America in order to escape being conscripted into the Russian Imperial Army. Grandpa arrived in Philadelphia. Years later we all so grateful he left when he did.
I NEVER knew the idea of connecting the kishinev pogrom with tbe russo japanese war but jesus christ that makes total sense. They werent even two full years apart. Wow
From Kishinev to Port Arthur... This video is great example of how nothing really happens on an island. 17:08 The Second Temple Period gymnasium haters must have rolled in their graves at this moment.
The "Senpai Nikolai" gag is especially great knowing that Nikolai is about to have his ass handed to him by the OG Senpai. Great video, really moving overview of Kishinev. And obviously the response to it has clear echoes with today's crisis with Russia.
We're starting to get really fclose to the time my Ukrainian ancestors came to the states! It's very likely this was part of why they left. I knew about the bond between Jewish Americans and Chinese americans but I didn't know it was stronger than just "Chinese places being open on Christmas"
First of all: this is an amazing documentary and why you don’t have a million subs is beyond me. 28:20: when you went off the list of all Krushevan’s personal life and got to the last one I was like: *of course he was!* A failed artist turns to anti-Semitism.
Many of his personal letters were kept by his nephew and given over to historians in the 1980s and 1990s. Their journey is actually detailed in Steven Zipperstein's _Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History._
bialik also wrote a famous poem in hebrew following the kishinev pogrom called על השחיטה in 1903 it is part of the education program in literature here in israel
@@stephenfisher3721 they are the same poem? the year is different and the content seems different as well edit i checked these are different poems this one is called בעיר ההריגה and not על השחיטה
Speaking of Jewish-Chinese alliances, is "two-gun" going to show eventually. Heard him described as "the real Indian Jones", personally I'd think of him as the "Original Jack Burton".
@@SamAronow Who was a hero, just a pretty clueless one. Cohen jumped into an altercation at his favorite gambling spot and it turned into a pretty notable career.
Were the other socialist groups in the Russian Empire not separate from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party? iirc from my own study of Latvian socialism in 1905, the Latvian Social Democratic Labor/Workers' Party was completely separate from the Russian one, although Lenin apparently admired the Latvian party for its more advanced militancy. I don't know if Pēteris Stučka was the leader of the LSDLP/LSDWP yet, I will have to check that (I think he was involved, but not the leader in any sense - he was rather clearly a Bolshevik). And also, the distinction between Menshevik and Bolshevik was not so great until like, 1917 in the LSDLP/LSDWP. I have also heard that the Bund was completely separate from the RSDLP and was refused entry, as you said. Maybe it's just the phrasing that is confusing me...
All of these groups were at various points separate and united. However, all of these groups, including the mainstream RSDLP, were dwarfed by the SR/Trudoviks, which we'll get too soon.
@@SamAronow Mm fair enough, it is complicated to talk about all that in one episode about a different topic so I guess it was just wording then. The SRs and the Trudoviks are quite fun!
Shoutout to Jutrzenka Kraków ayy great video Sam as always, you always hear about Bialik but never about the fact there were Jewish people arming themselves and trying to defend themselves after the pogroms
*CORRECTIONS:*
1. The prayer for the head of state is part of the Saturday morning service, not the Friday evening service. It also isn't performed at all in Israel. But I know you're wondering, and if it was, it would be for the President and not the Prime Minister. And yes, this is why I was being uncharacteristically reverent when the Queen died.
2. Something else that may have contributed to Chinese-Jewish-American allyship is that Chinese immigrants _also_ suffered horrendous pogroms in the United States. Before the 1880s, every town on the West Coast (including mine) had a Chinatown, and only the five that survive today weren't destroyed by race riots.
3. The NAACP did have Jewish founders, Henry Moskowitz and Anna Strunsky, but Schiff and Wise weren't brought on until 1914 after being invited onboard by Columbia Professor and Bull Moose Joel Springarn.
4. 24:55 I said "British refugees" instead of "Jewish refugees." But hey, they were British once they got there.
Franz Boas? He was a colleage of WEB Du Bois
Just a minor correction, at 24:55 you say British refugees, I think you meant Jewish ones
The Queen was a grandma and a great grandmother, you never know who reads this and I would not want to add to their grief. I still can't believe some people were joking about her corpse...give them at least a year to grief for goodness sake....😔
@@gyllenspetzfamily7993 She lived a life of extravagant luxury while people starved and struggled in the streets. You really can't understand why people didn't care or mocked her at all?
It is true that the prayer "He who gives salvation to Kings..." is not said in Israel. That is because the prayer also contains a subtle prayer for the Jews to be saved from the evil sword of the duplicitous foreign government. (Psalms 144:10 is the source of the opening line. Vs 11 is the direct plea for help.)
Religious Zionist Jews in Israel and the Diaspora do pray for the government and its ministers, but with a different prayer which recognizes the redemptive nature of the state, rather than asking God to redeem us from the state. (Incidentally, the prayer refers to God as צור ישראל, the intentionally ambivalent term used in the Declaration of Independence.)
Thank you again for the engagement and corrections.
"Working under the new Emperor Nikolai II, the Russian cabinet had successfully presented an image of the Russian military as not only the largest in the world but the strongest; exactly the type of existential threat to the West that Nikolai’s forebears had dreamed of creating. In reality, the Russian military of 1903 was the weakest among the Great Powers: the least disciplined, the least coordinated, with extremely low morale and no training whatsoever for urban environments like Kishinev." - such crazy era, imagine such a thing happening in our time.
Kinda did before Ukraine - I remember thinking that Russia would beat them within a few weeks, days even.
It's a tradition I suppose.
@@aidanrozema8522 That was their point. It was sarcasm
Don't forget that it was always a Russian (and Soviet) military strategy to throw as many as possible soldiers to the frontlines as human shields, until they win.
There is currently a massive project in Russia. Russia's ministery of digital development, are working on a massive program. A mass "digital mobilization". They intend to recruit half a million men from minority groups, periphery, the poor, political dissidents, criminals and disenfranchised communities
Via something similar to the Chinese social credit system that tracks after the citizens' information.
Why specifically them? People who "won't be missed" when they die in a war. People whom their death won't raise social disconnect, so they wouldn't need to violently suppress more demonstrations.
@@Batmans_Pet_Goldfish *Fiddler on the roof starts playing*
Great episode. The Uganda Scheme is one of those plans that initially sounds so bizarre it's hard to believe it was real. And good lord, the origins of the Protocols is even more unhinged than I thought.
@Old Britannia love to see you comment here... recently subscribed to you, love the great game content
The current UK government has revived the scheme, now featuring Rwanda.
@@matthewnonoo9238 Thanks, that means a lot, I appreciate it.
To be honest the 1900s was a wacky century
I believe there was also at some point a scheme to resettle Jews in Patagonia, but I'm not sure if it's related.(?)
Depressing to know that 120 years later nothing changed. The horrors, the violence, the justifications, the whataboutism, people still use the same language
4:32
I'll never understand how Christians can look at Christs example and the many messages in the Bible about revenge being pointless, and then having this notion of 'avenging' Jesus.
I wonder if the absolute monarch in Saint Petersburg drew inspiration from his counterpart in Constantinople and/or vice versa? Because I find it so interesting how the systematic genocidal purges perpetrated against Jews and Circassians in the Russian Empire in the late 1800s and early 1900s mirrored the systematic genocidal purges perpetrated against the Christian subjects of the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. These events and policies in the two "Black Sea Empires" are the main reason why countries from Argentina to Australia have such large populations of Ashkenazi Jews, Armenians and Greeks today (well that, and also things like poverty and technology).
Also, I'd just like to say that I very much appreciate this channel's commitment to historical accuracy when showing maps and flags! 💟 Even if this is a minor detail, it nonetheless irks me a bit whenever I discover cartographic or vexillological anachronisms in the content of YT channels that I follow and admire. Oh well. :)
Holy mother of God! That ending was amazing!
Shabat Shalom Sam,thank you for the great video ❤
this tragedy caused my family to leave Bessarabia and come to the USA. They didn't miss it
Absolutely stellar work as always. The way you contextualise Jewish history within the wider world events is unique , entertaining and informative
Pavel Krushevan as the author of "The Protocols" is new to me. I've always known that the most accepted theory is that "The Protocols" were created by Sergey Golovitsin by the orders of the boss of Tzatists Ochrancha in Paris - Pyotr Rachkovsky. And so Golovitsin copied whole sections from "The Dialogue" of Joly. And also, I think, it's clear that behind Krushevan was the Musscovian state and the Ochrancha, so I would not grant him with the infamous honor of creating "The Protocols" which could easily be the most evil book created by a human.
Apart from that, today I found that channel and since I love history I instantly fell in love with it. Those are great history videos! Thank you very much, I learn a lot from your channel @SamAronow.
One of your best documentaries. A horrific topic but a fascinating listen.
I thought this video was your best. And very timely because of your references to founding NAACP board members Jacob Schiff and R. Stephen Wise. People need to know the history of Jewish support for Black civil rights especially now when so many Black folks are uncritically gravitating to the Palestinian cause.
Thank you Sam, I love watching your videos, you have become my favorite youtuber.
These are fantastic videos! I’m using them in my class! Can you do a video on Jabotinsky & Revisionist Movement?
Informativ! Thx
Finally, giving the Bund the attention it deserves.
He already did an entire video about the Bund.
It's funny how 120 years later, the outlook on Russia by a VAST majority of nations is the same as in this video. (Also it is not beyond my attention that the start of this video begins... in what is now Ukraine.)
History my not repeat... but it sure as hell rhymes.
Chișinău is the capital of Moldova.
"with Britain itself being the second most popular destination for British refugees" - Sam, not sure if you can fix? Obvious you meant Jewish but still a small mistake
Chișinău*
kishinev was chisinau's russian name when russia occupied it.
It is rare that a video brings me to tears, but I couldn’t help but grieve. I have a history with the pogroms, and I am the great great grandchild of survivors of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War in Ukraine (The Petliura ones, I believe. Viva Svarzbard!) I want to thank you for covering these events. It hurts like hell to remember, but we have a duty to know what has been done to our people, and to prevent it from occurring again. I have started learning Yiddish, half for my bubbie and Zayde and half out of a sense of defiance. The Jewish people yet live.
Am yisrael chai indeed.
we remain my khaver! I'm in the same boat, great great grandchild of the survivors of the same round of pogroms and also learning yidish to defy!
"Every Friday night in the synagogue, the rabbi would recite a prayer for the emperor."
The standard practice is to say this prayer during the morning service.
Thank you for the great video!
May god bless and keep the tzar… far away from us!!
@@patria3023 Indeed!
Pavel Krushevan's logic is stunning in its ignorance "I stubbed my toe this morning, those damn Jews moving my table!"
Honestly, as a petty jew, I would do that.
@@patria3023 Shit, I'm not even Jewish and I'd do that.
"The myth of Russian military supremacy persisted both domestically and abroad." Now that sounds familiar...
I’ve read the comment several times before that “Russia is never as strong as it seems nor as weak as it appears to be.”
I guess it’s part of their military doctrine also, to mask things with appearances.
Excellent video as always. I am the great grandson of a survivor of the Kishinev Pogrom and I wonder something that I’ve never seen any sources on - Moldova (as we call it now) was historically one of the countries which had both Ashkenazim and Sephardim. How integrated (or not) were their communities, and did they have any differing experiences with the violence and politics of the time? Thanks
My mother was born in Bessarabia, one month after the Kishinev pogrom. This episode of yours hit home, definitely!
You mean grandmother?
I remember reading a 1966 book by Norman Cohn called "Warrant for Genocide" and a 2003 graphic novel by Will Eisner called "The Plot". Both explored the impact of the infamous Protocols but while in the first there was a shade of mystery regarding the identity of the Protocols' author, in the second one, Eisner mentioned how recent research (1990s) exposed the role of Matvei Golovinski and the Okhrana in the forgery. Now I realize there was a bigger (and more infamous) player, in the person of Pavel Krushevan, in this plot against Jews.
Yeah, the degree of high-level government complicity in the pogroms was consistently overstated until more information became available after the Cold War. Even I’ve fallen prey to that in my video on the May Laws. Of course, the government of the time consistently put out the line that it was justified, but they’d certainly have preferred not to lose the state monopoly on violence.
That changes, of course, when the form of government changes from absolute monarchy to a system with political parties…
@@SamAronow Somehow I am remindered of that strange scene in 'Crime and Punishment' where Katerina Ivanovna seems to think a direct appeal to the 'merciful Tsar' can solve the injustices fate placed up her. This came from an ideological programme that was well sunk in among the peasant and working classes of the unbesmirched monarch who just knew what was right for the masses without irony. It was in some ways the Persian model of imperial absolutism (down to the crown that replaced the Greco-Roman laurel) that Sassanid Persians had imported to Rome after the crisis of the 3rd century made the pseudo-monarch of the first half of the Empire untenable. The whole ideology of Byzantine inspired Cesaropapism in Russia required a kind of quasi-religious sense of the perfection of the monarch which meant the actual decrepid and collapsing state of the Russian empire could only be blamed on the incompetent conniving bureaucracy (that were in many cases semi-feudal inhereted positions) or by some darker conspiracy. The Tsar always remained aloof... at least until the chaos of 1905 and then the FIrst World War made it untenable.
The bloated class of disgruntled minor aristocrats like Pavel Krushevan probably had the most to gain in channelling the increasinly uncontrollable discontent away from them and their nepotistic corruption and mismanagement to the classic scapegoats of the Russian ultras. It's no coicidence in my opinion that Lenin and Krushevan both came from the same impoverished minor ethic aristocracy of the provinces, both had the same underlying grievance with the status quo just with vastly different expressions of their desire to overturn it.
Thank you Sam for covering this sad and difficult history. The quality of your content is astounding. It’s an honor to work alongside you.
Hollow Knight and the Russo-Japanese War are two things I never thought would be associated with each other but here we are listening to the prelude of the war with Lace playing in the background in a video about Jewish history
12:16 I wonder if that’s where the “Chinese Food and Movies” on Christmas tradition came from
Yes. And there's more to say about that as well.
When I was in law school in New York, the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association put on a cultural food day as a fundraiser. I remember as we were serving the food, one of our Jewish classmates declaring "THIS is the food of the Jewish people!" as he scooped up a plate of General Tso's chicken.
25:30 the UK government's Rwanda Scheme might actually be inspired by this, it's maddening. I hate it here sometimes.
Dear God, I had never even thought of that.
@@tomtaylor5623 Fuck off with the jew-hate and being able to criticise someone destroying something you love is not equivalent to wanting to leave.
I am kind of ashamed that I never knew about such a horrible tragedy before watching this video thanks for shedding light on something I never learned about before
Hey Sam! Such an important look at history! I was wondering if you could let me know about the sources used to identify Asheville on the list of cities in which Jewish protests occurred to raise money for support of Russian Jews. As a Jew that lives nearby I would be ecstatic to learn more about the local history, and I’ve had trouble finding it online.
Philip Ernest Schoenberg
"The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903"
_American Jewish Historical Quarterly,_ Vol. 63, No. 3
Page 269
www.jstor.org/stable/23877915
@@SamAronow deeply appreciate this! Thanks as always for the scholarship.
A century had passed, but we russians still cling onto stupid notion of "tsar is good, boyars are bad" and "if only tsar knew". I hope we can change this one day.
According to Vlad Vexler, the next ten years after this were the closest Russia came to a democratic society. And that episode is coming too.
Watching this episode as an Israeli in Tokyo hits *very* different.
Perhaps Krushevan is an example of why gays should relax, marry and live happy lives instead of holding it in and going insane.
I was more struck by the return of the Failed Artist-to-Fascist Pipeline which we first encountered with Drumont.
A functioning state with rule of law and protection laws for minorities is my No 1 recipe against pogroms.
Or, perhaps, a well-armed minority community that doesn't have to rely on government policy to protect them. The Kishinev Pogrom was illegal. You can't just wil "rule of law" into existence.
My mother's father was in the Russian army at the time. A "sergeant," an unusual attainment for a Jew, my mother told me. My grandfather might have witnessed first hand the ineffectiveness of the army in Kishinev. (My grandparents never talked about the old country.) Possibly that, plus the Japanese war, plus the other chaos of 1905, prompted him to desert by stolen boat on a moonless night and come to America. He settled in Boston, where there developed a Bessarabian Society, which my mother used to call the "cousins club." My grandfather sent for his wife and daughter in 1907.
" Saddam Putsein the Great Loser" is rapidly sending Muscovy back to 1917.
Really, the more you learn about the protocals, the more insanely ridiculous it is,,,,
Thank you, Sam. My grandmother survived the Kishinev pogrom, but I never reallzed the full, historic implications of this disaster.
Damn, the rare Japanese Empire W
You're such a great storyteller. As I am learning a lot of this information for the first time, your ability to keep major historical plot points and characters obscure until the perfect emotional/historical transition never ceases to shock me. Perfect example: the revelation that Pavel Krushevan, who up until this point in your video was just a moderately successful antisemitic Russian journalist, was at least the coauthor of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had my jaw hit the floor while watching. It really helped pull together a lot of loosely connected characters and historical moments into a much clearer and larger picture. Your ability to not only convey history but to do it in an entertaining and engaging way is truly a special skill.
In 2023 I am just staring at this with wide eyes. What is it with english politicians and sending people to Uganda.
Pogroms are my #1 reason for everyone being well armed and well trained.
My SRA friends were very excited about this episode.
@@SamAronow it's a matter of basic self defense and protecting the weak. Those filthy Kishinev rape gangs could have learned what a gatling gun was and I don't think a single woman in the country would have objected. But was that even possible? I know the first thing the bolsheviks did was take the guns but could the average person even get one into Russia pre-1918?
I don't know. But you'll soon see that having a gun and knowing how to use it wasn't enough.
@@SamAronow I'm speaking as an American who appreciates sun tzu's the art of war and Mike Tyson's statement about getting punched in the face.🥴😒 So are you saying that a well armed and disciplined militia could not have provided cover for folks to flee? I'm not talking about establishing a defensible situation I'd just want to granny and the kids out and melt into the countryside. Then honestly just get out of Russia. 🤔😑
@@gyllenspetzfamily7993 Difficult to do in a country where 87% of the population is rural and Jews were almost entirely banned from living in rural areas; also a country with internal passport checks.
"with Britain itself being the second most popular destination for British refugees" you meant Jewish refugees 24:50
also wow I had no idea on the scale of that pogrom it isn't that well taught in schools here
Oh this was nothing compared to “Kishinev II” in 1905.
@@SamAronow Spoilers...
Irishman here: Michael Davitt’s snide, condescending victim blaming has made me white with rage
He also blamed Jews for the Second Boer War. But at the same time he was _righteously_ furious at his countrymen who launched their own pogrom in Limerick just a year after this.
@@SamAronow started by a priest and euphemistically called a “boycott” if I’m right
I saw on twitter a few months ago you were reading about Jewish Ireland, I’m curious what the relationship was between our Jewish community and various elements of the Catholic and nationalist cultures of this era
Errata. ¨British refugees" should read ¨Jewish refugees¨
Please make an episode on Iraqi pogrom; Farhoud.
It is my intention to do so when I reach World War II.
I’m sure he’ll get to it before 2027
@@patrickrowan6001 it's still a long while till we reach ww2, we gotta go through interwar first
A sideline of the Jewish sports clubs: the boxers and wrestlers would form street patrols to protect the neighborhood from antisemitic muggers. One of them used this experience to develop Krav Maga in postwar Israel.
Really appreciate all your videos! Just wanted to say that, sadly, being from "the Progressive wing of the Democratic party" in the early 20th century context would have been fairly consistent with later being a Nazi sympathiser - roughly the opposite of today, obviously!
I really dislike how in many portrayals of him, in remembering the murder of Nicholas II and his family by the Bolsheviks, popular culture often overlooks his vicious anti-semitism, which often took the form of turning the other way (or even encouraging through organisations like the Black Hundreds) pogroms like Kishiniev, Kyiv and Odessa, which were bad even by the standards of the time. Some of Nicholas' personal correspondence regarding Jewish people are a huge yikes. This results in popular culture painting a way more sympathetic picture of the man than he deserves, whereas aside from his qualities as a family man, he was also very incompetent as a ruler (while at the same time stubbornly refusing to give up autocracy) and even vicious against certain groups he was prejudiced against.
I don't normally like to judge people based on one thing, but belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories basically tells you all you need to know about a person. It's never someone's only serious character flaw - it always comes with other issues.
Yeah basically you have to be both moronic and evil to start spouting that crap.
It's also kinda the last step. Who is it lately who says "all conspiracy theories end in antisemitism?"
Unless of course you're Israeli, in which case you've never experienced being a minority and thus never learned to read the dogwhistles. Which may be a healthy thing for a society in the long run, but it's very frustrating right now.
From what I've read in history and what I've seen in person, the most hardcore believers in antisemitism (I call them this way because of their cult-like beliefs) are oftenly delusional people who try to justify their mediocrity or utter incompetence by using an unfortunately too common scapegoat.
True. And it is often the first thing those people want to talk to me about! Because I have a noticable German accent. In some sense that is convenient.
Maybe I'm being too proactive, perhaps paranoid, but it'd be a shame if Sam had to close the comments section if a certain kind of people caught wind of this great video. Maybe the community should form a sort of city watch aimed to mass report any aggressive commenter
You sound exactly like my mom. But if worst comes to worst, I'll freeze the comments. I've done that with a few of my videos that seem to exceptionally trigger antisemites (Alexandra, Medieval England, Colonial America, Ethiopia).
@@SamAronowI've been told I'm too overzealous, but to be compared with a Jewish mother makes me feel validated! I hope everything gets better in Israel, greetings from Mexico
Shut it down!
Young Borochov AND Jabotinsky?
You are spoiling us mr. Aronow
I'm left as shit, but Jabotinsky > Ben-Gurion. I went through the same "oh, turns out I hate this guy" research phase with DBG as I did with Herzl. Lib-left Zionism should have been the way. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and A.D. Gordon knew what was up.
@@SamAronow So, is a Jabotinsky video coming soon?
25:40
Jewish Science Fiction author Lavie Tidhar wrote several alternate history stories in his anthology series Hebrewpunk and a full novel Unholy Land, where Herzl managed to convince the Zionists to establish a Jewish homeland in Uganda.
I'm surprised more people weren't for it. Considered this was before world war I where the sentiments of colonialism and love of empire hadn't yet died out.
The British perspective on this has opened my eyes to how it was viewed at the time: as an inhumane policy to get rid of an unwanted minority.
ROMANIA 💪🏻🇷🇴💪🏻🇷🇴💪🏻
Where can I learn more about the bundist defence strategy of Gomel? I'm honestly interested in that.
Great video btw.
Thank you for this video, I don't believe I ever learned about the origins of the The Protocols or about the pogrom in Kishinev, this was very enlightening.
~20:40 Sam repeats a section from the Bund video about Lenin and Martov's divide with only minor changes and leaves in an error, so let me copy-past part of my correction from that video here:
Lenin didn't think Russia could "establish Communism at any time," the divide between he and Martov was over who the primary allies of the Social Democrats would be in a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" against the monarchy, which both saw as a necessary precursor to the establishment of Socialism; Martov thought that the Bourgeoisie needed to be a central force in this Revolution, based on the precedence of the French Revolution, while Lenin thought that Russia lacked a Revolutionary Bourgeoisie due to the specifics of their economy, and that the workers and peasants (led by the Socialists) would thus need to overthrow the Tsar themselves. Lenin did not (at least at this stage) believe that Russia could transition to Communism by itself; as an orthodox Marxist, he held to the belief that the material conditions of Capitalism had to precede Communism. Instead, he believed that a "bourgeois-democratic" Revolution by the workers and peasants in Russia would provide motivation and support for Socialist revolutions in developed Capitalist countries like Germany and France.
Very good comment. It's an erroneous way to characterize both the divide between in the RSDLP as well as Lenin's outlook. As Trotsky (positioned originally in-between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks) later described it: "In accordance with its immediate tasks, the Russian Revolution is a bourgeois revolution. But the Russian bourgeoisie is anti-revolutionary. The victory of the Revolution is therefore possible only as a victory of the proletariat. But the victorious proletariat will not stop at the programme of bourgeois democracy: it will go on to the programme of socialism. The Russian Revolution will become the first stage of the Socialist world revolution."
The statement "if only the emperor knew" was generally ironic.
Some of this was taken directly from your Bund video, correct?
Another fantastic presentation! Shabbat Shalom! 👍
32:59 Senpai Nicholas lol
31:12 So according to this guy, War was a Jewish conspiracy, but so was peace. Um... so what is the preferred state?
"Russian World"
31:12
of course the russian antisemites blame everything progressive on jews
wait how is war and peace a jewish conspiracy????????
Please do a video exploring all of Ha'am and Nordau's ideas of Masculinization of Jews.
32:59 senpai Nikolai
My father's father was born in Kishinev. A lad of 18, my grandfather in 1900 left for America in order to escape being conscripted into the Russian Imperial Army. Grandpa arrived in Philadelphia. Years later we all so grateful he left when he did.
I NEVER knew the idea of connecting the kishinev pogrom with tbe russo japanese war but jesus christ that makes total sense. They werent even two full years apart. Wow
From Kishinev to Port Arthur... This video is great example of how nothing really happens on an island.
17:08 The Second Temple Period gymnasium haters must have rolled in their graves at this moment.
Krushevan indeed must have been
the Russian Empires own version
of Ernst Röhm .
The "Senpai Nikolai" gag is especially great knowing that Nikolai is about to have his ass handed to him by the OG Senpai.
Great video, really moving overview of Kishinev. And obviously the response to it has clear echoes with today's crisis with Russia.
I think the masculity debate could have its own video in a future series about jewishness and queerness 😊
Can we get a source on the Russian proverb "the proof proves nothing, where is the proof?" It's hilarious!
Vanguardism was very oversimplified, but otherwise a good video!
We're starting to get really fclose to the time my Ukrainian ancestors came to the states! It's very likely this was part of why they left. I knew about the bond between Jewish Americans and Chinese americans but I didn't know it was stronger than just "Chinese places being open on Christmas"
First of all: this is an amazing documentary and why you don’t have a million subs is beyond me.
28:20: when you went off the list of all Krushevan’s personal life and got to the last one I was like: *of course he was!*
A failed artist turns to anti-Semitism.
I love your use of Hollow Knight music in the last part.
I saw the dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli and went ohshit.
Wait Sam plays hollow knight?!?
Also thank you for the video!
Hi, I’m curious, from where did you get Pavel McRacistface Krushevan as being gay?
Many of his personal letters were kept by his nephew and given over to historians in the 1980s and 1990s. Their journey is actually detailed in Steven Zipperstein's _Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History._
all those priests and students are still roasting in hell!
I'm sorry, nothing to do with the topic (great video overall) but HORNET! 34:02 Love that game and OST. That's all.
in your map of the states, Minnesota is lacking the northern angle, which I believe should have still existed at the time.
No, it's there. It's just mostly covered by the Lake of the Woods.
@@SamAronow I see it now
These videos are literally unbelievable. Thank you thank you.
I wish you had them together to follow through so it's not so cut up.
SENPAI NIKOLAI
Uwu Big Daddy Nick plz absolutely dominate me Tsary uwu -Krushevan 1903
17:54 Zelda BOTW Korok forest?
A few minutes into this, very harrowing stuff. Humans can truly be vile towards each other.
Britian was the second most popular destination for british refugees?
bialik also wrote a famous poem in hebrew following the kishinev pogrom called על השחיטה in 1903 it is part of the education program in literature here in israel
The video mentions Bialik's poem with the title in English, In the City of Slaughter.
@@stephenfisher3721 they are the same poem? the year is different and the content seems different as well
edit i checked these are different poems this one is called בעיר ההריגה and not על השחיטה
@@almogz9486
No, it is a different poem. In Hebrew is called Be'Air Hahariga בעיר ההריגה
@@מ.מ-ה9ד that's what I said ...
@@almogz9486 Thanks for clarifying they are two different poems.
Speaking of Jewish-Chinese alliances, is "two-gun" going to show eventually. Heard him described as "the real Indian Jones", personally I'd think of him as the "Original Jack Burton".
But Jack Burton was an idiot who stumbled through the whole movie.
@@SamAronow Who was a hero, just a pretty clueless one. Cohen jumped into an altercation at his favorite gambling spot and it turned into a pretty notable career.
28:57 I know this isn't the most important thing to focus on but the left hand is not a useless deadend even if you are right handed.
Really? Every time I try to write with mine, it comes out looking like chicken scratch...I'm left-handed.
Are you sure Herzl sounded like that? 🤨
The video is depressing but fascinating, especially the part about Krushevan.
Probably the grimmest video yet..😢
Yet 😢
it's pretty much kicked damascus off the "most grim video" throne
Bruh, it's Chișinău, not Kishinev.
Kishinev is the Russian name for Chișinău
@@superdevton1137 And? Chișinău is the official name. Who cares for a Russian version of the name?
@@RhiannonSenpai it’s important in this context as Moldova was controlled by Russia at this point in time
Were the other socialist groups in the Russian Empire not separate from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party? iirc from my own study of Latvian socialism in 1905, the Latvian Social Democratic Labor/Workers' Party was completely separate from the Russian one, although Lenin apparently admired the Latvian party for its more advanced militancy. I don't know if Pēteris Stučka was the leader of the LSDLP/LSDWP yet, I will have to check that (I think he was involved, but not the leader in any sense - he was rather clearly a Bolshevik). And also, the distinction between Menshevik and Bolshevik was not so great until like, 1917 in the LSDLP/LSDWP. I have also heard that the Bund was completely separate from the RSDLP and was refused entry, as you said. Maybe it's just the phrasing that is confusing me...
All of these groups were at various points separate and united. However, all of these groups, including the mainstream RSDLP, were dwarfed by the SR/Trudoviks, which we'll get too soon.
@@SamAronow Mm fair enough, it is complicated to talk about all that in one episode about a different topic so I guess it was just wording then. The SRs and the Trudoviks are quite fun!
Shoutout to Jutrzenka Kraków ayy
great video Sam as always, you always hear about Bialik but never about the fact there were Jewish people arming themselves and trying to defend themselves after the pogroms
wtf your drawing of herzl looks a lot like a couple family members! and im not even jewish
17:51 nice to see some Zelda music here lol
He frequently uses Zelda music, which gives his videos an extra touch if epic ness, I don't know how he dodges Nintendo's ban hammer 😅