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Crafts and the labor movement in the years 1895-1902. - Slonim as one of the cities in the settlement area with the highest percentage of artisans. - Statistics of the Jewish workers in the city at the end of the century. - The penetration of the Jewish woman into the workforce. - The working conditions in the workshop and the factory. – The S.D. in Vilna and the S.R in Minsk and their influence on the workers in Slonim. - The first strike in the city in 1897. - The strike organized in 1898 and its failure. - The formation of the workers' circles. - The soldier Yaakov from Minsk and his mission on behalf of the S.R. - Zalman Konitza as a propagandist on behalf of the S.D. - The emissary Nathan from Minsk. - The strikes in 1901. - The act of desperate terror in a furniture factory. - The emissary M.H. Gelman and his socialist activity in the city. - The strike in the “Podriades”. - Gelman's organization. - Locally produced Yiddish proclamations. - The youth studying in the network of Gelman's organization. – The “Bond” emissary Masha Zelkind. - The district conference of “Bond” in Slonim. - The organization of the local branch of “Bond”. - The establishment of a “Poalei Zion” branch. - A new front in the city: the Socialist Front.

From all that has been said above about the livelihoods, the branches of livelihood and the economic conditions that existed in the city in the years 1870-1900, we have seen what decisive changes occurred during this period of time both in the economic structure of the settlement and in the attitudes of many in relation to craft and work. Indeed, during this period, these changes were general for the majority of the Jewish population in Russia.

The best Jewish economists and historians have already proven the blatant distortion in the official version, which supported the anti-Semitic argument and even the opinions of many Jews of that generation themselves, and according to which the Jews of Russia earned a living before the revolution mainly from trade, petty trade, leasing, brokerage, - in short, on purely “parasitism”. The opinion that was considered as half-truth as early as the first half of the 19th century, was already completely distorted and far from reality at the end of the century.

As is known, a general official census was held in Russia in 1897; And the official statistics, detailed and checked, prove that within the last quarter of the century, the economic structure has gradually changed so that in 1897, on average, in the entire country, 55.83% of the Jewish population earned a living from physical labor, actual hard work, while only 38.68% constituted the merchant class, the petty traders and the brokerages, and only 5.49% belonged to the “unspecified”, and were engaged in religious services, etc. These numbers are averages, and differed, by large or small differences, from region to region and district to district (the general exact percentage of the Jewish professional composition to the entire country, was according to the census as follows: Trade and petty trade: 38.65; Industry and crafts: 35.43; Laborers, servants, etc.: 661; Unspecified occupations and occupations: 5.49; free professions and public workers: 5.22; Transportation (wagons, etc.): 3.98; Agriculture: 3.55; In active service in the army: 1.07). (See the history of the Jewish labor movement in Russia”, by Buchbinder, p. 9, Vilna, 1931).

One of the districts, where there were the maximum numbers relating to work professions, was the district of Grodno. Indeed, while the general average percentage of craftsmen was 13.2, in Grodno it was many times greater, reaching 26.5! (Reb Aryeh Rosenberg: “For the regulation of Jewish art”, Hatzfira 1919, newspaper edition 8). But even within the district itself there were large changes from city to city, and we have local data, which indicates that Slonim was one of the places in the district of Grodno, where the percentage of craftsmen within the Jewish settlement reached to a record of approximately 33%! Indeed, from local statistics we know that at the end of the nineties there were about eight hundred families of Jewish craftsmen in the city. According to an average of 5 people per family, which was the norm under the conditions of the Jewish population at the end of the century in Russia, they were about four thousand people, which was about a third of the Jewish settlement of 11,500 people (according to the 1897 census). (It should also be remembered that a certain part of the family members also participated in the actual work in the workshops of the family).

Based on this fundamental value, we have the clear proof that about two-thirds of Slonim Jews earned a living on a hard work already at the end of the century. Indeed, to the class of artisans and their families should be added other types of laborers, day laborers. To this number we should add the many apprentices and trainees who worked for them. Several crafts in the city employed many people, relatively speaking. These were, mainly, the branches of tailoring, carpentry, tanneries, masons, blacksmiths. We saw above that the tannery alone employed about two hundred people, and about that number worked in the blacksmith industry. At the end of the century, the furniture manufacturing industry developed in the city. In the close and distant surroundings, there was a good reputation for the furniture manufactured in Slonim in terms of quality and prices. The furniture manufacturers did indeed invite expert craftsmen from the large factories in Warsaw and the northwestern region, but they were few, and together with them and under their guidance, many local carpenters worked (see “The memories of Yosef Yaroshevich” in the bulletin of Slonim expats in Argentina, newspaper edition 5, Buenos Aires 1957). The construction industry employed many workers, and some of them traveled to summer jobs outside the city. We will add to this the multitude of workers who worked in the new industrial factories that were established in the city at the end of the century (and were discussed above, in chapter 35). In sawmills, flour mills, schnapps breweries, breweries, canneries, and in the textile, metal, soap, matches, cigarettes factories. In all these workplaces, which were owned by Jewish owners, hundreds of Jewish workers, both with families and singles, were employed. (Indeed, many Christians also worked there). Agriculture also continued to directly employ many Jews; seasonal laborers worked every spring and summer for the owners of estates in the vicinity. We have clear evidence of this in one of the correspondences from 1901: “many people in our city from the people of Israel of both sexes found work in the fields. I heard from the owners of the estates, the glory of our brothers and sisters working in their fields as day laborers, that they excel in their work in all branches of the craft in the field and that they work

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diligently and have a good fitness” (Hatzfira 1901, newspaper edition 168).

An important factor in Jewish employment in the city was introduced, beginning in the mid-nineties, by the penetration of women into the circle of production and work. Alongside the housekeeper, the woman who worked in her shop, the maid, the “slave” from a poor family, who would work for many years with one family - arose the young Jewish woman, who worked in various female professions: in fashion tailoring (madistkes), in hat making for women, in sewing underwear, corsets, etc., and as salesperson in shops. With the increase in the number of women looking for work, Jewish young women also started working in factories. In 1896, many girls were already working in the city in industrial plants, as evidenced by this news item: “Hundred girls from low-income families do all work for wages, in five factories, which were founded in the city not long ago” (Hatzfira, 1896, newspaper edition 172). The factories for the production of woolen curtains and scarves, soap, and cigarette wrappers, employed mainly women.

Based on all these data, it can be determined that two-thirds of the community already belonged, sixty years ago, to the class of laborers who earned their living, under various and mostly very difficult conditions, as part of manual hard and physical labor. But it was not a uniform social class. Even though we are talking about workers, laborers, and despite the argument of the theorists of the Jewish labor movements at the time, they did not yet constitute a class, and there were not defined social classes. Just as the Jewish craftsman was not at that stage considered a possessive and exploitative producer, so also the Jewish laborer was not yet considered an actual and recognized proletariat at the end of the century, according to all its identifying marks.

Members of Slonim from that generation and the time period before 1914, remember well what was the nature and economic productive power of the craftsman in the city. The craftsman was usually the owner of a wretched, tiny, primitive workshop, in which he worked very hard about 15-16 hours a day, in order to earn his meager livelihood. As the density in the city increased with the deportation from the villages and the decrees that restricted the Jewish economic activity, the tailor, the leather worker, the carpenter and the blacksmith were forced to struggle hard under the terrible conditions of competition. Except for the large carpentry for furniture production and 1-2 of the main tailors in the city, the artisans employed at most 4-5 laborers, and in most of the workshops, insofar that they employed employees at all, only 1-2 laborers worked. This poor and impoverished craftsman had been oppressed by the yoke of the “patent” (a license to hold a workshop), that he often did not even have the money to pay for it; He himself was exploited by his client, the farmer, who would bargain any penny, and by the Jewish owner. This “employer”, so to speak, symbolized the “exploiter”, with whom the lone laborer, who was often exploited many times over, had to deal.

Admittedly, the Jewish craftsman and industrialist (who also had to cope with the conditions of the regime, under heavy anti-Semitic government pressure) transferred a decent amount of the weight of their oppression on the backs of the laborer, and thus the laborer's working conditions reached the dimensions of maximal exploitation. Suffice it to say, that the working day lasted 15-16 hours; Even on Saturday night, the laborer had to work until late. In order to be free on Saturday night, he had to work the entire night before Friday. The salary was minimal, a starvation salary, which could barely satisfy his most vital needs. In the urban “Podriades”, for example, where every year, between Purim and Passover, the female workers who were kneading the dough and rolling the matzahs, and the male workers who operated the ovens - worked 18-20 hours a day; Only 4-5 hours were allowed for rest and sleep. We have a highly qualified Slonim testimony on this as well: “The women in “Podriades” work hard labor for twenty-one hours from time to time. Now they only worked 17 hours, because the daughters of the rich families of our nation participated in the enterprise of “baking matzahs for the poor,” and as a result, the workers could rest and refresh themselves from their strenuous work at night” (Hatzfira, 1903, newspaper edition 88).

The conditions that prevailed in the tanneries, leather working, by the writing desks of the Torah scribers and in all industrial establishments, were not much better. These circumstances, which were, in fact, more or less similar in the entire area of the settlement, constitute, therefore, the background for the deepening unrest that spread throughout the area, and reached Slonim later as well. And so, by virtue of the external conditions and the fervor of the dialectic of the Jewish Marxists at the time, the main two leading camps, the givers and takers of the work, suddenly considered themselves as “exploiters” and the “exploited” practically, even though in fact there was much of the ridiculousness and artificiality in the “class wars” that suddenly spread in the city.

And the days - the nineties, the days of the revolutionary windstorm, which began to rage across the Russian Empire, back in the eighties, even before the assassination of Alexander II by underground revolutionaries. The Russian popular liberation movement “Narodnaya Volya” (“Freedom of the People”), which was founded in the sixties - seventies, spread to Jewish centers in the eighties and the early nineties. It was still a non-Marxist movement, all of which was expressed in the desire for another phase of the rehabilitation of the peasants, after their liberation from slavery; By “coming to the people”, spreading education and knowledge of nature among the masses of farmers and workers. It was, in fact, a sort of Russian “educational movement”, that only many days later, leaned more to the left; Only from the mid-nineties onward did it loosen, due to the growth of the socialist movement, the influence of Marxism on the “Narodobolts” and the entry of the Russian S. D. party into the Socialist International.

In the Jewish centers in Lithuania and Belarus, the “Narodobolts” were active. In Odessa, Hummel, Bobroisk, Minsk, Vilna, Bialystok and dozens of other cities, circles of followers of the movement were formed, which included many Jews. In some cities, the Jews made up the majority of the activists. But in the nineties, the infiltration of the Marxist parties in the circles of the Jewish workers increased. While the social democrats were more active in Vilna, Minsk was the center of the social revolutionaries. These details are important for us, since Slonim was subject to the influence of both of these centers, and they will give us a good understanding of the entry of the working class circles in the city into the combined circle of influence of these centers.

This influence was manifested in the years 1895-1897 first of all in the strike movement. At this stage, the workers' struggle had a purely economic character, to improve their working conditions. Much was written about this movement in the memories of the generation, and the writers of its chronicles called it simply: “streikism”, to emphasize its non-political form. The first strikes in Vilna and Minsk broke out among the tailors; And under the influence of the news about them that reached Slonim, and perhaps also direct propaganda of the first emissaries

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from there, the focus of the first strike in the city in 1897, was also in tailoring, although it was a fleeting, short episode and it was quickly eliminated. But in 1898, there was already an organized strike at the main tailor in the city, and all the workers in the industry stroked as well in solidarity. The strike spread to other professions as well. The furniture carpenters were also convinced to participate thanks to the expert craftsmen who were invited from outside. These were sort of the first propagandists who came from large industrial centers, in which the laborers' movement had already gained a substantial support. They were the apprentices of the movement, imbued with a fighting spirit, which stuck to the practitioners who worked among them. The demands were: twelve hours of work per day, the elimination of work on Shabbat evening and the improvement of wages.

And so, it was a new thing in the city, which neither the employers nor the local police nor the entire Jewish community had yet experienced. Due to the lack of experience and also due to the reactionary repression regime, the strike was doomed to failure. If in the year 1898, Vilna could not have been saved from the agents of Zubatov, the head of the secret police in St. Petersburg, who at once caught all the “Bond” activists in the underground, then obviously, at this point, an open strike in a provincial city, that is visible to the police, could not succeed. The background and general and local circumstances had not yet been ready for strikes: these became possible only after 3-4 years. The police acted quickly and forcefully. In view of the “Kramola” that was discovered in the city, Zubatov even invited an emissary from St. Petersburg for a special investigation. As a result of the investigation, all the organizers of the strike were caught, arrested and sentenced for deportation to Siberia.

We only have a minimal information about the identity of few of the pioneers of the strikes in the city: Antzel the carpenter (the son of Moshe the water pumper), Leibke the floorer (Brukirer), Baruch the woodchopper (Schnitzer), Yankel the shoemaker. Unfortunately, those in the city who recorded the lists, did not care to shed more light on the identity of these tortured young men, so that their names would be famous in the history of the community from which they came. And so, appeared in front of their community, the unknown laborers and the apprentices, the young men “whom every wrongdoing was kosher to them”, that the writers were so concerned about their souls that they would not rebel against God and the king… Now it was found out what these young men were doing in their few free hours, the children of the Slonim ghetto, the natives of the dark allies from “Breg” or from “Baliena”, who secretly planned with their innocence and enthusiasm, the story of their stormy souls: Antzel the carpenter, Leibke the floorer, Yankel the shoemaker… and so they were exiled into Eastern Siberia, without leaving us any additional information, as if this is how fate wanted to emphasize their symbolic path: they came out from their anonymity on the Jewish street in Slonim, and in a shroud anonymity of tortured fighters they faded and disappeared.

After the deportation, the unrest was quiet for a while. Only a few guys continued to meet secretly. There were also some among them, who had already perused socialist literature, there were also some educated people who read books on the natural sciences and the first works of the generation in Yiddish literature, and thus the first laborers' circles arose in the city, whose entire occupation at this stage was expressed in reading among themselves and in further education. The well-educated in the circles would read popular pamphlets on socialism to their members as well as Peretz stories in Yiddish. Peretz list “Di Prome Katz”, which contained a transparent allusion to the regime, was a success. They also read lists from the “Di Arbater Shtime” newspaper, the illegal journal the “Bond”, of which individual copies would have reached their hands, before the “Bond” branch even existed in the city (see “The memories of A. Yodelwitz, in the newspaper “Unzer Shtime”, Slonim, 1927).

In the years 1898-1899, the S.R and S.D. centers in Minsk, Vilna and Bialystok, began to pay more attention to the provincial cities and their towns. Each of the movements wanted to occupy the positions in the district. In 1899, a Jewish guy from Minsk, who was discovered in the laborers' circles, after discreet searches and various contacts, came to serve in the guard corps in Slonim, as a proxy on the part of S.R. in Minsk, to organize the movement in the city. We also do not have the identity of this revolutionary agitator, except for his first name, Yaakov. The soldier Yaakov was indeed an exemplary soldier, but he knew the secret way to the laborers' circles in the city. He expanded the circles, that each of them included, for security reasons, only 10 people. The main subject of the circles under Yaakov's guidance was: teaching - because while teaching the theory of the S.R., it became clear to him that many laborers do not understand its theory at all. Among his listeners he found illiterates (in Russian), while the slogan of the movement was: the displacement of illiteracy from the masses of laborers. The circles simply turned into evening classes. And in those years, when the national educated people from “shokdei melacha” (diligent craftsmen) and the girls from “mimaskil el dal” (from the educated to the poor strata) taught the boys and girls from the poor strata, the educated people of the second camp reached the same subject, but in a different way.

During the two years that Yaakov was active in the city, he surrounded in his circles many hundreds of workers, instilled the program of S.R. and managed to get out of the tangle in peace, because he knew how to arrange his actions in the most complete secrecy. In those years, 1899-1900, the spirit of S.R. prevailed welfare. He, Yaakov, had a single opponent on behalf of the S.D., a local scholar, who served sometimes as a Hebrew teacher, who was offended by Yaakov, H. Zalman Konitza. But the debate of these two was internal, in secrecy and in peaceful ways (this S.D. man, Zalman Konitza, was an important place in the workers' movement in the city, during the stormy years of 1904-1906 and later, until the arrival of the Soviets in 1919, when he became a communist).

After the soldier Yaakov finished his service in the army, he returned to Minsk, but in light of his success, the Minsk Center did not neglect Slonim. He was replaced by the member Nathan (also of unknown person). However, in 1901, the propaganda of S.D. of Vilna had already intensified. A heated debate began in the circles, and there were different opinions on the issue: when and how will the revolution come, weather it will follow a gradual mass action, according to Marx's theory in the form of S.D., or for acts of heroism by individuals, who would destroy the “Samodarzhbia” (rule of the individual) in the form of the S.R.? The political propaganda in the circles changed the nature of the expected struggle, from economic to political. At the same time, the economic, everyday matter was not neglected either. At the end of 1901, several strikes were renewed. A carpentry strike in one furniture manufacturing factory was particularly intense; and under the influence of the debates about acts of terror by individuals, one of the strikers committed a desperate act: he poured sulfuric acid on the owner of the factory. Indeed, the guy managed to evade and cross the border, - but the act reached the police, and the anti-Semitic newspapers in the capital (“Slava”, “Navaye woremiya”) jumped on him as if he was evidence of the expanding revolution among the Jews, and also as a pretext to slander the

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Jews of Slonim. The case also aroused the ultra-Orthodox to be overly concerned about the youth and fueled the stay of the Maggid Rabbi Moshe Zvi Greenberg in the city. When the event was revealed, one of the writers announced (Hatzfira, 1901, newspaper edition 158): “The youth of the craftsmen here are notoriously wild.”

The emissary Nathan as well as another anonymous emissary from Minsk continued their secret operation. Their main task was now: to instill the socialist consciousness into the workers.

At the beginning of 1902, there was an important turning point in the underground propaganda: a Marxist propagandist in his middle age, named M. H. Gelman, came to Slonim. It was not known on behalf of which party he came: S.D. or S.R. He had a past in the socialist movement in London. He turned out to be incredibly energetic and organizationally strong, and he took upon himself, under conditions of maximalist conspiracy, the burden of training the youth, visiting the towns, etc. He expanded the movement, which now encompassed hundreds of hired workers, Jews and Christians, in groups and circles, and yet, he tried to give the movement a non-partisan character. Despite the fact that the “Bond” had already been active since 1897, that is, for over four years, in Vilna, Bialystok and other centers in the area, there was still no organized branch of the party in the city. Gelman himself was, according to our knowledge, an anarchist, but he did not leave his impression on the movement.

In this year socialist propaganda also started in the schools of the artisans… the sons and apprentices of the artisans, who would still accompany their fathers or their employers on Shabbat when they went to the Beit Midrash, would teach the common people, after the prayer, the theory that they had heard in the circles… They did not hold public meetings on behalf of the movement's activists in the synagogues that year, as there was a grave danger of being caught and exiled - to Siberia. Such “meetings”, in which there was desecration of the prayer houses and which were held against the anger of the collectors, were held only three years later, in 1905.

Along with the training for a political struggle, Gelman did not abandon the small struggles with demands for salary benefits, that were accompanied by strikes: between Purim and Pesach 5662 (1902), when the “Podriads” opened, a strike broke out by workers in the bakeries, and their demand was: the elimination of night work and an increase in salaries. For this strike, for the first time in the city, proclamations were distributed in Yiddish, which were printed on a hectograph that was purchased by the organization. In the strike they also used violent means, such as smashing windows, and pouring water into stoves. After a few days, the “Podriads” owners surrendered, and the strike ended successfully.

Mrs. Mirel, a local seamstress, who was very devoted to the movement, helped Gelman with propaganda and training. (She is also anonymous. Her last name was not mentioned in the source we have. But in this case, it is possible to determine her identity since, according to the information we have, she immigrated to America even before 1914, and it is possible that the remains of old Slonim expats in the USA could add personal details about her). Gelman appointed a 5-member committee for the organization, called Central “Sakhadka”, and next to it, were organized professional committees, called “Pach Sakhadkas”, which would coordinate the action (managing negotiations with employers, organizing strikes, etc.) for each profession. Each “Pach Sakhadka” was joined by a representative from the central “Sakhadka”. At this stage, the organization already had a secret warehouse in Schulhoif, where “literature” and the hectograph were hidden, and that's also where they would print the proclamations. The “Sakhadkas” meetings were held in a secret cabin in the yard of a laborer's residence on Yordziky Street.

That summer Gelman also penetrated the local intelligentsia. Externs, students from rich families, high school graduates who studied outside the city, and even some educated veteran teachers, joined the movement and began participating in underground operations. At this stage, we see clearly, according to the scale of Slonim, how the Haskalah movement reached the end of its logical journey in its historical path; How that movement, which was established as a response to the stagnation of the generations and has come a long way, was later divided into two main factions: the national educated in the incarnations of Hovevei Zion and political Zionists on the one hand, and those who tended to the social and universal liberation movements on the other (the synthesis between the two movements came later). Admittedly, there were still those in the city who could not choose between the two sides. For example, Dr. Rosenblit, who joined the Zionists and was even a lecturer at their club, hosted secret meetings of the circles with Gelman and Mirel in his apartment, and even participated in them.

In the summer of 1902, the efforts of “Bond” activists to expand in the provincial towns increased. With the formation of the revolutionary atmosphere in the country and in the area of its influence, the “Bond” looked for ways to spread its control over the entire district. He strove to organize a local committee in every district town, which would serve as a center for all the surrounding towns. And indeed, in the main district towns of Lithuania and Belarus, “Bond” branches were established that year, under the influence of emissaries, propagandists of the central committees of the Bond in Vilna, Bialystok, Minsk (this is known from the report, which the central committee of the party forwarded to the Socialist International, as well as from other resources). It also reached Slonim. In fact, the effect of the “Bond” in the city and the surrounding area had already strengthened, thanks to its propaganda material as well as its newspaper, and the only thing missing was the organizational framework.

And here, on the Chol HaMoed Sukkot 5663 (at the beginning of October 1902), the representative of the regional committee of the “Bond” in Bialystok, Masha Zalkind, came to the city. She was an experienced “revolutionary”, and had already been counted among those deported from Bialystok to Siberia, when she was caught in an underground operation back in 1896. She managed to convene a district conference in Slonim, in which delegates from Slonim, Zitel, Rozhnoy, Darchin and Zelba participated. After two days of discussions and decisions, the “Bond” branch was established in Slonim, which also served as a contact and training center for the sub-branches in the aforementioned town. Gelman in retrospect did not object to this, and agreed to the addition of his non-partisan organization to the framework of the “Bond” party. The conference ended with a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the “Bond”, which was then celebrated in all the areas in which the party operated.

Since then, the second phase of the labor movement began: the phase of a distinct political struggle by the branches of the Jewish left parties, which were then organized in the city. And indeed, at the beginning of 1903, only a few months after the organization of the “Bond” branch, another workers' association was already established in the city, under the influence of outside factors, whose plan had not yet been definitively defined, but whose plan had already become quite clear by the name of the association, “Poalei Zion”, which was a kind of a first synthesis experiment of Zionism and socialism. At the beginning, the association had several dozen members, and like the “Bond” branch, it was joined not only by laborers, but also by youths from the houseowners circles, as well as young people from the Zionist youth

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The Zionist, from the association of “Mokirei Zion.” This association also advocated a political-socialist struggle (this was even before it was divided into “combatants” and “non-combatants”).

And so, in the year 1903, a new front was organized, a front of two socialist organizations, which in the tense atmosphere that prevailed in the city at the time, as an echo of the revolutionary tension that prevailed throughout the country, was alert and ready to act in the local arena, according to the instructions of the party centers.

The political events of 1903-1906. - Echoes of the Pogrom in Kishinev. – The renewed incitement in the city. - Slonim in the anti-Semitic newspapers. - Jewish self-defense in the city. - Slonim as a recruiting center for the Reserve Corps. - Pogrom evening atmosphere in the city. - The Jewish defense is ready for action. - The “transaction” between Yakobson and the Galilee military headquarters. - Incidents in the market and by the “column of shops”. - The skirmish in the city square. - The defense goes into action against the rioters. – The riots in Halinki and the surrounding villages. - Murder of a city policeman by Jewish revolutionaries. - The exploits of the revolutionary youth in Slonim. - The elections for the first Duma and their course in the city. - Yakobson's selection for the Duma. - The pogrom in Bialystok and its echoes in Slonim. - Yakobson's historical role in the Duma. - The public activist from Slonim protects the honor of Russian Jewry. - Yakobson and Rosenbaum in the prison in Slonim. - A pogrom atmosphere following a blood plot from the… 17th century. - Self-defense is on guard.

With the renewal of the wave of pogroms in Russia in the years 1903-1904, there was another change for the worse in the state of spirits in the city. The Pogrom in Kishinev mostly shocked and depressed. The horror of the years 1881-1883 was renewed with the arrival of the detailed news about the brutality discovered in the “City of Slaughter”. In public meetings and in mass eulogies in the synagogue and Beit Midrash, the memory of the martyrs of Kishinev was brought up, and the shared Jewish destiny in the evil and hatred regime was etched in the mind of every Jew. In the same year, the men of the “Black Century” ran amok in the city and in the district and incited the farmers to kill, by spreading a rumor that an order had arrived to kill the Jews^[398]). On Rosh Hashanah 5664, things in the city almost turned into a new blood libel^[399]). The Jews of Slonim received special attention again during the anti-Semitic newspapers, which was troubled due to the complete “Judaization” of the city^[400]). This time a special touch was added to the case of renewed incitement: the Poles also joined the net of hatred and the words of the blasphemy. And not only that, the priests from the local Catholic churches also went out to their community calling to boycott the Jewish shops and open businesses on the “purity of Christianity”^[401]).

With the strengthening of the wave of revolution in 1904-1905, the argument of the struggle with the Jewish revolutionaries was added to the catapults hurled by the regime and its subjects against the Jews. What made the difference between the years of the riots of 1881-1883 and the atmosphere of the pogroms of 1904-1906, was the disciplinary disintegration that now prevailed in the circles of the government itself and contained the greatest danger to the lives of the Jewish masses. The instinctive feeling of these multitudes again dictated them salvation in emigration. Since the pogrom in Kishinev and during the years 1904-1906, the flow of mass emigrants from Slonim resumed, and according to one correspondent from that time, - “there is not a single day that families do not leave the city and its surroundings for the Atlantic Sea”^[402]). Most of those leaving were families of artisans and laborers. “Lifesavers” in the form of border smugglers to Germany, and from there to the ports of Hamburg, Bremen and Antwerp, appeared again. The immigration did not weaken, even after they received letters full of bitterness about the difficulties of adaptation in the new country, in New York^[403]).

But meanwhile, based on the labor movements and the Zionist movement, the consciousness of self-defense among a wide stratum of youth in the city was developed. Whether the recognition of armed self-defense came as a phenomenon to the general revolutionary movement, or whether it was to be seen as one of many visions of the national awakening, this popular recognition became a characteristic fact of the renewed period of pogroms, and in this it differed from the apathy and depression that followed the riots of the eighties. Indeed, we do not have certified evidence of the existence of a unified defense center in the city, but separate defense cells existed in the branches of the “Bond” and “S.S.” parties and the Zionist youth in Slonim^[404]). Small arms, pistols and grenades were purchased underground. The defense cells gathered armed youth, who were ready for any calamity that could come in those stormy years. The atmosphere was saturated with rumors about riots about to break out.

And indeed, a testing time was not long in coming: at the end of 1904, it the midst of the war with Japan, it became known that Slonim had been designated by the supreme military authority as a recruiting center for the reserve corps from a large area in the northwestern region, and that thousands of reserve men would shortly pass through the recruiting and inspection offices of the military headquarters in the city. In the circumstances of those days, in the atmosphere of incitement, the loosening of discipline and the laxity of the police, there was no need for a distinct public sense and special vigilance, to notice the danger posed to the Jewish community in the city; There was room for real fear of a very hot “inflaming”. The bustle in the city about what was to come was great on all sides; The defense cells of the parties prepared their weapons and were ready for action. Although the governor of the city tried to reassure the Jewish population, that no harm would be done to them and that he has the power to treat every situation, - the reasonable leadership of the community knew, headed by Yakobson, that these promises, which in these years resembled more to idle advice, should not be trusted. On the other hand, out of realistic caution and a desire to prevent an open conflict between gangs of rioters and the “Haganah” personnel, which could have led to unpredictable results, -

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the leaders of the community look for ways that bypass the city government, in order to get through the serious recruitment days in peace. In the rotten tsarist regime, such ways were not inevitable. It sounds incredible, but this is a fact: by word of mouth, it is said that the headquarters of the Galilean army is “negotiating” in its Cossacks, and it has “mercenary” to any demander who pays generously, and that not only one community has already needed this strange but real patronage. Vladimir Yakobson and Nahum Luzinsky were assigned the delicate and responsible mission of contacting the military headquarters on this matter. We have a very reliable testimony from one of the community's public activists about the details of the “transaction” that was made between the leaders of the Slonim community and between… the Galilean headquarters of the armies of H.M. Nicholas II: the headquarter “leased” to the Slonim Jews a company of 50 Cossacks together with their horses, vehicles and weapons, headed by two officers^[405]). The testimony omits any details regarding the “secret payment” received by the senior staff officer in charge of this negotiation, but on the other hand, it details the payment to the members of the company: three rubles for each officer, and fifty kopecks for each Cossack, - per day - except of daily allowance, food, lodging, and drinking… We also know, and this is from correspondences in the Hebrew journalism - that the Cossacks matter cost the community thousands of rubles, which were specially collected for that matter^[406]).

The description of the joy that prevailed in the city upon hearing the news that the Cossacks would defend it against the zapasniks (reserve men) with full payment, should be used as the subject of a stinging satire… Indeed, in the first operations, with the arrival of the thousands of recruits, when a savage and incited crowd attacked the stalls and shops in the city square, and also in other incidents that happened near the “column of shops”, the Cossacks did not disappoint at all, and showed the ease of their arms and their whips. An incident also happened, when on Shabbat “Mevarchim”, during the prayer, a gang of rioters burst into the great synagogue, blocked the entrance and began to rage inside; The Cossacks were called to reach the place prior to the incident, and after a skirmish between the two groups, the rioters were removed from the place^[407]). But in another case of a skirmish in the city square, after an attempt to attack the stalls and vendors, the rioters defeated the Cossacks. With no order to use firearms, the Cossacks began to retreat. There was only a short distance between the retreat of the Cossacks and the outbreak of unrestrained bloodshed, as the rioters went on a rampage while shouting across the square: Beat the Jews: “Bey Zshidaw”! (Beat the Jews!).

The men of the Haganah, who stood on guard all the days of the reserve army camped in the city, but did not intervene as long as the Cossacks, that were hired by the community, fulfilled their mission, - entered into action at this dangerous moment. They were joined by strong men from all the nearby Jewish alleys, among them porters who were standing in the market, wagon drivers and laborers. And although both sides refrained from using firearms, knives and daggers were raised. The retreating Cossacks were encouraged by the Jewish defense and joined it, and beat the rioters, some of whom were seriously injured. The correspondent letters to the newspapers about this whole affair hide more than they reveal, but a hint of this is given in the following paragraph: “We thank H. Yakobzan, because he, in his great grace, has tried a lot to hold back the riots in our city; However, wherever the army men from the reserve corps passed, they made terrible things… when the reserve corps left our city, our brothers in the surrounding area suffered great damage”^[408]). - Indeed, disappointed by their lack of success in Slonim, the thugs went wild in the town of Helinki and in Jewish houses in the villages of Derbeintschich, Savich and others^[409]).

Excessive tension prevailed in the city also after the murder of a local policeman by Jewish revolutionaries. Without being able to catch the assassins who disappeared without a trace, the police charged two innocent young men, who were later sentenced to death. With the intervention of the Av Beit Din Reb Mordechai'li, who vouched for their innocence, the sentence was commuted and they were sent to hard labor in Siberia^[410]). By the way, the suspicion of the people in power about the Jews reached the point of absurdity: an order from above tasked the “Ispravnik” in Slonim to also check the kosherness and impeccable non-revolutionary decency of Reb Mordechai'li himself^[411])…

Another bold act of a Jewish political prisoner among the city's youth brought the spirits to a boil: while being taken by train to the central prison in Bialystok, he pulled a pistol from a loaf of bread that was brought to him before the train moved, killed the policeman who was guarding him and jumped out of the train while driving. All of this took place in the suburbs of Slonim, and the prisoner managed to escape to the city's alleys. All the police and gendarmerie searches were in vain, because the fugitive managed to escape from the city and cross the border. Meanwhile, the people of the community were again overwrought by the vigorous searches in the town houses and in all the attics^[412]).

Much has been written and said about the misdeeds of the Jewish revolutionary youth in Slonim in those years. Weapons depots were also seized sometimes, including a portable printing machine for printing proclamations, as they were called in the revolutionary style^[413]). The most piquant description from these books of memoirs is from the famous writer Mokedoni, who tells of a meeting he had in Slonim with the strangest revolutionaries he had seen in his life: these are the apprentices and the young students of the Torah scribes, who during the day sit bent over the sacred work of writing Torah scrolls and mezuzots, and at night they go out armed with pistols and grenades, on the mission of the revolutionary movement, to stockpile weapons, to smuggle literature of a different kind than the one in which they engage in the day^[414])…

Also after the pogrom in Bialystok in 1906, the city was shocked, not only because of the close proximity of the two cities, but also because of the historical role that Yakobson played in revealing the identity of the perpetrators of the pogrom and those who worked with them.

At the beginning of that year, an important event took place, which was an honor for the community: its excellent public activist, who was at the head of public activities in the city, Ze'ev Yakobson, was elected as a delegate to the first Duma. For that first parliament in the history of the Russian Empire, which was established by the ruler as a result of the revolutionary wave of 1905, 12 Jews were elected to represent all of Russian Jewry.

The only Jewish organizational framework that showed up for the elections for the Duma was an association of various circles, formed at the beginning of 1905 under the name: “United Movement to Obtain Equal Rights for Jews in Russia.” The association included various public movements, among them the Zionist movement, the People's Movement (“Folkistan”) founded by Dubnov and even - assimilated. Since the Jewish left-wing parties boycotted the elections, the association list was in every district - the only Jewish list. In the list of the association for the district

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Of Grodno included Yakobson as a representative of the Zionists; He was recognized by all Zionist associations in the district as the only personality worthy of introducing to them. The elections in the city were held in a tense atmosphere. The representatives of the Jewish list conducted a concentrated propaganda. These were the first parliamentary elections in the history of the city for the Jews. Yakobson appeared in many public assemblies, and the second Jewish candidate from the district, H. Ostrogorski, also participated in these assemblies. Two Jews were elected from the Grodno district, Yakobson and the above-mentioned H. Ostrogorski, a well-known jurist from Grodno, who tended to assimilate. According to the number of Jewish delegates in the Duma and the size of the Jewish settlement in Russia, each delegate represented about half a million Jews, and the delegate from Slonim had the honor of representing the 12th part of Russian Jewry.

With the gathering of the Duma, Yakobson stood out in it with his activity in the Jewish faction and the Kadets party (constitutional democrats), to which the faction was attached. But Yakobson's historic moment came, after the news of the pogrom in Bialystok, which broke out on June 1, 1906, was received in the Duma. When the shocking details about the participation of the “Black Century” and military personnel in the slaughter were clarified, a great storm raged in the Duma, which was largely liberal, and a three-member committee of the Duma was rushed to Bialystok to investigate the circumstances of the pogrom. Since Bialystok was in the Grodno district, Yakobson was chosen as a member of the committee. After a careful investigation and examination on the spot, the committee determined that indeed soldiers under the guidance of officers and according to orders from a higher-up, actually participated in the murders. Yakobson was the living spirit of the committee, and he was the one who shocked the Duma in a warning and explosive speech, when the whole house was in a frenzy, with a severe indictment against the government and the army, and in the flow of his words, when he could not hold back his spirit, he burst out with the well-known exclamation: “The glorious Russian army was pursued and retreated from the Japanese, but excelled in acts of heroism against the defenseless Jewish population in Bialystok”… The rebuke of the representative from Slonim was the greatest Jewish appearance in the first Duma, and it was the peak of Jewish Duma activity.

Slonim was agitated, frightened and proud at the same time at the appearance of the energetic and fearless activist of the community. They were very worried about Yakobson's fate in Slonim, since his call caused outrage among the army circles, and a wave of threatening letters (and even invitations from army officers for duels) began to flood him. But about a month after this storm raged, the Duma was dispersed by the government. In view of the threats, Yakobson was forced to go abroad for a while. On his return, he was imprisoned in the prison in Slonim for three months, for the sin of signing the “Vyborg Manifesto” (after the dispersion of the Duma, some of the delegates gathered in Vyborg in Finland and issued a protest manifesto against the government, for the dispersed of the Duma). In Slonim, together with Yakobson, the second delegate to the Duma, Dr. S. Rosenbaum (who in 1919 was the foreign minister of independent Lithuania), also served his sentence for the crime of “signing”. Slonim then proved its admiration for its leader when hundreds of Jews accompanied him on his way to the prison in Zamoshtase^[415]).

Meanwhile, days of panic passed over the city, because they were afraid that, in their quest to take revenge on Yakobson, the local people of the “Black Century” would stage a “game” similar to the one in Bialystok. That summer, the self-defense cells of the left parties were practically alert for an action, in cooperation and coordination between them.

A pogrom atmosphere reigned in the city again in August of that year due to the blood plot that originated… in the 17th century in Slutsk. And this was the case: in the middle of the 17th century, the Jews of Slutsk were accused of murdering a Christian boy, and since then the bones of the saint were kept in a Catholic monastery in that city. And here, after 250 years, the “Holy Synod” of the Russian Church ordered the bones to be transferred to the Preboslav Monastery near the town Superasal in the Bialystok district, as he determined that the boy was a member of this religion… The transfer of the bones was held in a religious procession with thousands of believers, and its organizers outlined the route of the procession through Slonim, and to make the situation even worse, it had to arrive in the city on Saturday. As a prelude to this, the men of the “Black Century” distributed in the city and the surrounding area, in markets and churches, an incitement pamphlet, the subject of which was: Use of Christian blood by the Jews!… The pamphlet was distributed in front of the police in thousands of copies.

Terror fell on the settlement. In view of a cross procession that will pass through the city, when the bones of the “saint” are carried in front, and in such an atmosphere of open incitement, and all this only two months after the pogrom in the neighboring Bialystok, - this horror was understandable. A delegation turned to the city minister, an emergency consultation was convened with the Rabbi of the city. Of course,

They did not rest on the laurels and waited for the “mercy” of the minister, and the “self-defense” groups stood guard. According to the recommendation of the city minister, the rabbi allowed grocery stores to open on Shabbat, so that the multitudes of “cross travelers” could stock up on food. At the last moment, after the city minister felt the real danger, he placed the police on hold – Miraculously, the procession passed quietly, and the Jews of Slonim breathed a sigh of relief^[416])…

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Text Footnotes

398. The Jew, 1904, newspaper edition 25. Return
399. Hatzfira, 1904, newspaper addition 220. Return
400. The Jew, 1902, newspaper edition 46. Quotes from the hatred article in the anti-Semitic newspaper “Slava” about Slonim Jews. Return
401. ibid. 1903, newspaper addition 22. Return
402. ibid. 1903, newspaper addition 3. Return
403. ibid. Return
404. Memories, M. Perlstein, Slonim, 290, 304. Return
405. ibid. Slonim, 288, 290. Return
406. ibid. Hatzfira, 1905, newspaper addition 7. Return
407. Perlstein, Slonim, 290. Return
408. The Jew, 1905, newspaper edition 7. Return
409. ibid. Hatzfira, 1905, newspaper addition 7. Return
410. One of them, H. Oskovski, returned to Slonim after the revolution of 1917. Return
411. See Memories, M. Perlstein, Slonim, 296. Return
412. From the memories of Chaim Rabinowitz, Moshe Lichtenstein and others. Return
413. See “Der neir wog”, newspaper edition 13 dated July 12, 1906. Return
414. The book of memories of Dr. Mokedoni, published by Mark Turkov, from the series of books on Polish Jewry, Buenos Aires. Return
415. The list of M. Ginzburg (from Canada) about the delegations to the Duma Yakobson and Ostrogorski in the journal of the expatriates of Grodno in Argentina. Return
416. M. Perlstein, Slonim, 302. Return

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