There was one kind of charity that could never be proactive in its approach, and this was the aid organized by the Jewish community after each of Kiev's pogroms in 1881 and 1905. What these committees needed more than anything was resourcefulness and efficiency, and for the most part they were very successful in providing both immediate relief in the days and weeks after the pogroms as well as longer-term assistance to those whose homes and businesses had suffered damage. In the half-year after the 1881 pogrom, the Kiev Jewish Society for assistance to the victims of the 1881 Disorders in the South of Russia had raised almost 220,000 rubles, of which 38 percent was a donation from Baron Gintsburg of St. Petersburg, 33 percent came from abroad, and 29 percent from throughout the Russian Empire. By October 1, 1881, the committee had already distributed more than 150,000 rubles worth of assistance—about two-thirds of it to Kiev Jews and the balance to other cities and towns throughout the southwest. This heroic sum was nonetheless a drop in the bucket compared with the 2.5 million rubles in losses that the society estimated Jews had suffered in the pogroms.145 The estimate given by Count P. I. Kutaisov in his official investigation came up with a lower figure: 1,474,168 rubles in damages, of which the largest two categories were individuals with losses of under 100 rubles and between 100 and 500 rubles (561 individuals out of a total of 889). (That there were also a substantial number of wealthy Jews in Kiev was confirmed by the seventy individuals who claimed losses of between 5,000 and 40,000 rubles.)146
In the days immediately following the pogrom, the society organized emergency tents and hot food for thousands of Jewish refugees. after two weeks, as the refugees began to return to their homes or find interim housing, the tents were taken down and distribution points for food and money (5 kopecks per person) set up at several points around the city. The society then divided the city up into districts for the purposes of applications for aid, which were reviewed by "commissions of trustworthy local residents" and assigned an amount to be awarded based on losses. This plan was clearly based on the "district guardianship" model, based on new theories of welfare and philanthropy, which would be adopted in many cities throughout the empire in the 1880s and 1890s. In addition to small one-time grants to families, the committee also made substantial loans (of 500-1,500 rubles) available to merchants to enable them to rebuild their businesses.147
The Kiev Society had originally been intended to provide aid exclusively to Kiev Jews, but soon found itself assisting Jews from throughout the southwest region. This was testament not only to the extent of the destruction wreaked by the pogromshchiki and the shock it left in its wake—many Jewish communities were simply unable to organize themselves to provide effective aid—but also to the effectiveness of the existing organizational structures within Kiev Jewry and the competence of its leadership. Certainly the local authorities could not be relied upon to assist the pogrom victims, just as they had failed in protecting them from the pogromshchiki; the city council refused to release 15,000 rubles from the korobka funds for pogrom aid, and then—only after being asked by the Jewish community—did councilors vote to make a 3,000-ruble grant from the municipal coffers, not a particularly large sum.
Several years later, Mordecai ben Hillel Ha-Cohen published a review of the Kiev Society's activities in Ha-melits, praising it for its efficiency, honesty, impartiality, and lack of bureaucracy. Whereas the notables in St. Petersburg had not lived up to expectations in raising funds for aid to pogrom victims or coordinating an effective policy vis-a-vis the government, wrote Ha-Cohen, the Kiev Society had triumphed on both counts, sending its own representatives to the capital to meet with Minister of Interior Ignat’ev and working with the press to put a stop to harmful rumors.148 The Society's success can be attributed at least in part to its chair, Max Mandel’shtam, who, as Jonathan Frankel notes, emerged in the crisis of 1881-82 "as a highly articulate spokesman and effective organizer."149
By contrast, the activities of the "Kiev Committee for Provision of Aid to the victims of the Pogroms of 18-21 October 1905" were received somewhat less favorably, at least by some. Of course, the scale of destruction here was much greater than that of the 1881 pogrom—two months after the pogrom, total losses were estimated at 7,000,000 rubles—and thus the task much more difficult.150 But there was another important difference: as the committee's report testifies, Kiev Jewry was now divided up into many more groupings and constituencies, each of which had its own demands. This was a factor of the community's size, of course, but also of the many associations and societies that had sprung up in the previous decade or so, as well as of the politicization and factionalization of Russian Jewry overall. Thus, for example, representatives from the Subsidized Kosher Cafeterias, the Jewish Day Shelter for Children, the Sanitorium in Boiarki, the Artisans' Association, and the Committee for aid to the Working Class all requested funds from the committee, and a newly organized but as yet officially unregistered association of brokers (maklery).151 at one meeting, a man by the name of I. L. Raikhlin appealed for aid to the spiritual rabbis of Kiev (the committee rejected the request, but then granted it when it was brought again at the next meeting); at another meeting, I. B. Esman asked for assistance to "four anonymous tsaddikim."152 Amazingly, even non-Jewish institutions applied for assistance on the grounds that some of their constituents were Jewish; this was the case with the Women's Trade School, the Kiev Trade Guild, and even the Russian Orthodox Boris and Gleb Brotherhood, which requested aid for warm clothing and shoes, as Jewish children were being educated at their facility.153 Was this a testament to the extent of integration of Jews into Kiev society, or simply greed on the part of these institutions? If we take these requests at face value, perhaps the administrators of the school, the guild, and the brotherhood felt duty-bound to care for pogrom victims who were associated with their institutions, or possibly felt even a religious or moral obligation to make up for what other Christians had done. If, however, the Pogrom Aid Committee was the only source to which they turned for funding (and this is unclear), then the gesture of assistance—to be provided with Jewish money alone!—was somewhat less altruistic.
The report also betrays a certain lack of trust among Kiev's Jews; committee members frequently requested verification of the aid applications of a number of individuals and groups—often, apparently, with reason; an association calling itself the Society for the Provision of Bread to Poor Jews was told that it could not receive aid so long as it was under the oversight of just one individual and not the official community organization. Twenty percent of the aid applications from petty and middling traders were rejected, as were 12 percent of those from artisans.154 The committee had nowhere near enough money to provide for all those who were in need, and thus had to husband its resources carefully. Despite the apparent attention it paid to a fair distribution of aid, the committee still came in for criticism; an article in the St. Petersburg-based Jewish weekly Khronika Voskhoda complained that its activities were marred by favoritism, funds were not being distributed by need, and no criteria for fair distribution had been established.155 The comparison with the reception of the activities of the 1881 Pogrom Aid Society is instructive. The Kiev Jewish community was smaller in 1881, as was the scale of the destruction; nor were recipients of philanthropic aid or indeed the wider public accustomed to criticizing the leadership who came to their aid. The large and diverse audience that was Kiev's Jews in 1905 had also become a critical one, and demands for transparency and probity would now become the norm, as we shall see in the next chapter.
A total of 676,000 rubles was raised by the committee, almost 400,000 of it in Kiev and another 270,000 sent by the International aid Committee in Berlin. In January 1906, the committee reported that many of those who had received aid had already used it up (artisans, for example, had received an average of only 37 rubles each) and, not having been able to rehabilitate their businesses, were living "in dire need, in hunger and cold." Local sources of private charity had been exhausted.156
World History
