Nicholas II and Anti-Semitism.

[Romanov_Fan19]

thank you 

[JamesAPrattIII]

Another good book on this subject:
"Pogrom Anti-Jewish violence in Modern Russian History"

Among the interesting points in this book:
The Russian Newspapers of this time even ones with good reputations in the west. If they said anything about jews it was usually bad.

Tsar Alexander III on the 1881-3 pogroms He was saddened and disturbed to find out that his soldiers would like to attacked the Jews not the rioters and he was also shocked the that an officer was found taking part in a Pogrom!

Many Russian thought the May Laws or Temporary laws were too easy on the Jews.

[Ally Kumari]

The police inaction was explained as I wrote earlier. The lower level "on the street" police were sympathetic to the pogrom and the man in charge was dismissed with Nicholas' permission for his mis handling of the events:
"Plehve secured the tsar's agreement to dismiss von Raaben because of his poor handling of the disturbances.  He sent his director of police, A.A. Lopukhin to Kishniev to investigate the conduct of the local authorities at the time of the pogroms.  Lopukhin did not discover any trace of premeditated preparation of the pogrom, but he concluded that the events could not have taken place without the participation of the lower police ranks. "

Here is Spiridovitch's take on Nicholas, from his memoir:
There was an opinion widely repeated in which the Emperor had detested the Jews.  That is incorrect.  As he was a Russian, and a man well versed in political and social history, the Emperor would not love the Jews, however he never once displayed the slightest hatred toward them.  He always showed himself to be as equally fair in regards to them as he was to many other groups.
     Those who created the anti-Jewish policies were acting in accordance with their own personal beliefs, and were hiding behind the Emperor and were trying to make him the scapegoat for them.  All of that was for nothing."

Also, several soldiers of the Orchestra of Nicholas' own Praeobrazhenskaya Regiment were Jews, there was a huge row when Dombadze tried to have them expelled from Yalta during one of Nicholas's stays at Livadia.

Hello! I realize I am 14 years late to this discussion, but would it be possible to share the full citation of the Spiridovitch´s quote? I would like to use it in my thesis, but I do not own the book and it would take weeks before it would get here. Not to mention, at present, I have no idea if the bookstore is even accepting orders.....

[slhouette]

I know this! It's buried somewhere in "The Great War and February Revolution 1914-1917." It's separated into 3 books so it's a lot. It's online in Russian at this link: http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/spiridovich_ai/index.html

It's interesting but extremely biased. I'd be interested to know what your thesis is - I really hope it's not Nicholas II apologia :-( This particular forum discussion took place many years ago, but it's helped me in my own research in the specific subject. In my opinion, it doesn't matter if Nicholas felt particularly wrathful towards Jews; just the fact that he didn't actively and forcefully advocate for an oppressed people, such as disbanding the Pale/similar restrictions, or dispersing the Black Hundreds, is inherently antisemitic. It's kind of useless to make a systematic issue so deeply personal by debating in circles on Nicholas' personal view/feelings. If Nicholas chose to defend/benefit a government system that upholds antisemitism, he was antisemitic. :-( !!!!

[slhouette]

Oh, I forget if these have been mentioned back in this thread, but I was recently reading some of the Sokolov depositions and found some interesting bits that are really incriminating to how Nicholas felt about Jews post-revolution:

From Kaudia Bitner: "I don't think [Nicholas] knew the people. He had this attitude towards the people: kind, good, soft people. He was confused by the skinny [?] people in this revolution. Its rulers are "the Jews". But this is all temporary. It'll all pass. The people will come to their senses and there will be order again." This is my own translation so I'm not sure what she meant by "skinny."

From Alexandra Tegleva: " I know the views of the Princesses on the revolution. They, of course, expressed the views of their parents. They said that it was a product of Germany, which acted for the collapse of Russia through the Bolshevik leaders, mainly Jews."

These depositions are up online in Russian. Here's a link to Tegleva's since it's already right in front of me: https://runivers.ru/doc/d2.php?SECTION_ID=6596&CENTER_ELEMENT_ID=150758&PORTAL_ID=6600