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TheBlack Hundreds[a] werereactionary,monarchist, andultra-nationalist groups inRussia in the early 20th century. They were staunch supporters of theHouse of Romanov, and opposed any retreat from theautocracy of the reigning monarch.[1] Their name arose from the medieval concept of "black", or common (non-noble) people, organized into militias.[2]
The Black Hundreds were noted for extremism and incitement ofpogroms,nationalisticRussocentric doctrines, as well as variousxenophobic beliefs, includinganti-Ukrainian sentiment,[3]anti-Polish sentiment,[4] andanti-Semitism.[5]
The ideology of the movement is based on a slogan formulated by CountSergey Uvarov: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality".[6]
The term was intended to be pejorative in revolutionary newspapers, but adherents used it in their own literature. They traced the term back to the "black lands", where peasants, merchants, and craftsmen paid taxes to the government (compare toBlack council), meanwhile lands owned by the nobility and church were called "white lands"; the term "hundred" (sotnya) was used to refer to a feudal administrative division. In the right wing extremist imagination, it was the loyal people of the Black Hundreds who gathered tofight Poles and traitors when it was needed.[7]
Revolutionary newspapers identified the Black Hundreds as a threat, describing them as "hooligan gangs" paid by the government to threaten political opponents. TheMenshevik leaderJulius Martov feared that the government would bribe lower class individuals to act against the social revolutionaries of the time. The term "Black Hundreds" started to appear in newspapers around 1905, along with warnings that the government would mobilize the Black Hundreds in pursuit of mass murder, and would even resort to inciting anti-Jewish pogroms and strife between different religious groups. They alleged that the Black Hundreds were being organized by the police, and called for resistance. The term became more closely associated with pogrom-like violence after thousands of people were killed in attacks on demonstrations, public assemblies, and in theanti-Semitic pogroms that followed theOctober Manifesto.[7]
A number of Black Hundred organizations formed during and after theRussian Revolution of 1905, such as:
In 1905-1914 Black Hundreds didn't exist as a single movement; numerous political groups and parties representing monarchist ideology in the Russian Empire had different ideological views. Even the concept of "Russian nation" was interpreted differently, with some seeing "Russian-ness" as a religious category, while others defined it in a civic or ethnic sense, or as their combination.[12]
Union of the Russian People ideologistAlexander Trishatny considered Russian nation to be the combination of three main ethnic groups: "Greater Russians",Belarusians and "Little Russians" (Ukrainians).[13] In major urban centres Black Hundreds tended to see their nationalism in terms of political loyalty to the tsar. Among secular leaders of the Black Hundred movement there were manyinorodtsy belonging to non-Slavic ethnicities, including people ofGerman andFrench origin.[14]
EthnicRussian nationalism, in comparison, was supported by a minority of Black Hundred organizations. Its supporters had their centre inKyiv and promoted the idea of allEast Slavs comprising a single ethic group. This could be seen as an attempt to counter the Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish national movements.[15]
Until the early 1910s most Black Hundreds leaders saw Jews as their main enemy, but with the rise of theUkrainian national movement their representatives started a campaign against what they saw as "Ukrainianseparatism" promoted by "mazepinists", allegedly supported byAustria-Hungary and embodied in the figure ofMykhailo Hrushevsky.[16]
Many representatives of the Black Hundreds were supporters ofagrarianism.[17]
Members of the Black Hundred organizations came from differentsocial strata—such as landowners, clergymen, thehigh andpetty bourgeoisie,merchants,artisans, workers, and the so-called "declassed elements". ThePostoyanny Sovyet Ob'yedinnyonnykh dvoryanskikh obshchshestv Rossii (United Gentry Council) guided the activities of the black-hundredists; the Tsarist regime provided moral and financial support to the movement. The Black Hundreds were founded on a devotion to theTsar, church, and motherland, expressed previously by the motto of TsarNicholas I: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" (Pravoslaviye, Samoderzhaviye i Narodnost). The Black Hundreds conducted oralpropaganda: in churches by holding special services and during meetings, lectures, and demonstrations. Such propaganda provoked anti-Semitic sentiments andmonarchic "exaltation" and incitedpogroms andterrorist acts, performed by the Black Hundreds' paramilitary groups, sometimes known as "Yellow Shirts".[18][19] A leading role in the Black Hundred movement in Ukrainian lands belonged to the Orthodox Church.[20]
The Black Hundred movement publishednewspapers, such asZnamya (The Banner) orRusskoye znamya (Russian Banner),Pochayevsky Listok (ThePochayev Page),Zemshchina,Kolokol (Bell),Groza (Thunderstorm),Veche (Popular Assembly) and others. Many rightist newspapers, such asMoskovskiye vedomosti (Moscow News),Grazhdanin (Citizen) andKievlyanin (Kievan), published their materials as well. Among the prominent leaders of the Black Hundred movement wereAlexander Dubrovin,Vladimir Purishkevich,Nikolai Markov,A. I. Trishatny,Pavel Krushevan, Pavel Bulatsel,Ivan Vostorgov, M. K. Shakhovskoy, SaintJohn of Kronstadt,Hieromonk Iliodor,Bishop Hermogen, and others.[21]
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When twoDuma delegates, Grigori Iollos (Poltava province) andMikhail Herzenstein (b. 1859, d. 1906 inTerijoki), both from theConstitutional Democratic Party, were assassinated by members of the Black Hundreds, their press organRusskoe Znamya declared openly that "Real Russians assassinated Herzenstein and Iollos with knowledge of officials", and expressed regret that "only two Jews perished in the crusade against revolutionaries."[22] The black hundred were known to have used violence and torture on anyone they believed was a threat to the Tsar.
Members of the Black Hundreds carried out raids (with unofficial government approval) against various revolutionary groups and pogroms, including inciting pogroms against Jews.[23]
The historian of the Black Hundred movement Sergei Stepanov, writes that after the1905 Russian Revolution, fighting squads of the Union of the Russian People and other extremist right-wing organizations became the weapons of the Black Hundred terror.[24]
Radicalsocialist parties organized revolutionary terror in retaliation to the Black Hundred activities.Vladimir Lenin, leader of theBolshevik faction of theRSDLP wrote in 1905:
The fight against the Black Hundreds is an excellent type of military action, which willtrain the soldiers of the revolutionary army, give them their baptism of fire, and at the same time be of tremendous benefit to the revolution. Revolutionary army groups must at once find out who organises the Black Hundreds and where and how they are organised, and then, without confining themselves to propaganda (which is useful but inadequate) they must act with armed force, beat up and kill the members of the Black-Hundred gangs, blow up their headquarters, etc., etc.[27]
On behalf of the Saint Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, an armed attack was carried out on the Tver tea house, where the workers of the Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant, who were members of the Union of the Russian People, gathered. First, two bombs were thrown by the Bolshevik militants, and then those who ran out of the teahouse were shot with revolvers. The Bolsheviks killed two and wounded fifteen people.[28]
Revolutionary organizations carried out many other terrorist acts, mainly against the chairmen of local departments of the Union of the Russian People. So, according to the police department, only in March 1908 in one Chernihiv province in the city ofBakhmach, a bomb was thrown at the house of the chairman of the local union of the RNC, in the city ofNizhyn the house of the chairman of the union was set on fire. The whole family died, in the village of Domyany the department's chairman was killed, two chairmen of departments were killed in Nizhyn.[29]
TheSocialist-Revolutionaries also killed prominent Black Hundreds such as Nikolai Bogdanovich and Gavril Luzhenovsky.[30][31]
The Black Hundreds classified Ukrainians as Russians,[32] and attracted the support of manyRussophiles who considered themselves Russian and rejectedUkrainian nationalism and a Ukrainian identity.[33] The Black Hundred movement actively campaigned against what it considered to be Ukrainian separatism, as well as against promoting Ukrainian culture and language in general, and against the works of Ukrainian poetTaras Shevchenko, in particular.[34] InOdessa, the Black Hundreds shut down the local branch of the UkrainianProsvita society, which was dedicated to spreading literacy in theUkrainian language and Ukrainian cultural awareness.[33]
According to Klymentiy Fedevych, Black Hundreds and the wider monarchist movement in the Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire had their own local specifics. Although their supporters from among ethnic Ukrainians were loyal to the tsar, this didn't contradict to their distinct identity as "Little Russians" and a sense of local patriotism. They tended to oppose ethnicRussification and frequently used the terms "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian" in their publications. In most cases, Black Hundreds in Ukraine tended to view Ukrainians ("Little Russians") as a separate ethnic group, distinct from "Greater Russians" and "White Russians", but united with them into a singleTriune Russian nation. Moreover, their populist rhetorics had many common points with the programs of Ukrainiannational-democratic movement.[35]
These tendencies were especially widespread in Polish-Ukrainian border regions such asVolhynia, where the monarchist movement was the most popular political force among ethnic Ukrainians.[35] Representatives of the Union of the Russian People in Ukrainian lands, such as VolhynianarchbishopAntony Khrapovitsky, actively used elements and symbols of the Ukrainian national movement in their activities.[36] In order to achieve more influence on the local population, supporters of the Black Hundreds among the clergy promoted the translation of theGospel intoUkrainian, supported the publications of Ukrainian-language sermons and other literature, and even made attempts to introduce religious services in Ukrainian.[37] In 1912 Nikon, bishop ofKremenets and one of the leaders of the Union of the Russian People in the State Duma, introduced a bill which would allow Ukrainian as a language of school instruction and support the studies of Ukrainian history in schools.[38]
A number of Ukrainian political figures, most prominentlyMykhailo Hrushevsky, recognized the Ukrainian adherents of Black Hundreds as part of the broader Ukrainian political movement representing itsright wing, and made calls for cooperation with them.[39] InPodolia many members of the monarchist movement from among the clergy simultaneously participated the Ukrainian national movement, with the local Orthodox bishop supporting bothProsvita and theUnion of the Russian People.[40] Activities of the Volhynian branch of Union of the Russian People in promoting the memorialization of Ukrainian history were positively evaluated byDmytro Doroshenko,Ivan Ohienko andOlena Pchilka.[41]
In 1909 the idea of the establishment ofKholm Governorate, which was promoted by Orthodox archbishop and notable monarchistEulogius Georgiyevsky, found the support of progressive Ukrainian activists includingOleksander Lototsky, who saw it as a way to evadePolonization of local Ukrainians. In early 1914 UkrainianRada newspaper described members of Kyiv's Black Hundreds as "not alien to the Ukrainian movement" and praised them for recognizing the poetic talent of Taras Shevchenko andIvan Kotliarevsky.[42] Throughout the existence of the Black Hundred movement in Ukraine, Russian ethnic nationalists remained a minority in its ranks.[43] After the fall of Russian monarchy in 1917, many Ukrainians who had formerly supported the Black Hundreds and used to sympathize with the Russian monarchy, adopted a purely Ukrainian identity. As a result, the lands of Western Volhynia, which had demonstrated the highest degree of support for the Black Hundreds before 1917, became the cradle of theUkrainian Insurgent Army during the 1940s.[35]
The Black Hundreds organized four all-Russiancongresses to unite their forces. In October 1906, they elected the so-calledglavnaya uprava (a kind ofboard of directors) of the new all-Russian Black Hundred organization"Ob’yedinyonniy russkiy narod" (Объединённый русский народ, or Russian People United). After 1907, however, this organization disintegrated, and the whole Black Hundreds movement became weaker as the membership rate steadily declined. After theFebruary Revolution 1917, the remaining Black Hundred organizations were officially abolished.[44]
After emigrating abroad, many Black Hundreds were among the main critics of theWhite movement. They blamed the movement for not only failing to stress monarchism as its key ideological foundation but also supposedly being run under the influence ofclassical liberals andFreemasons.Boris Brasol (1885–1963), a former member of the Black Hundreds, was among those who later emigrated to theUnited States. There he befriended industrialistHenry Ford, who gave Brasol a job onThe Dearborn Independent newspaper. Brasol also helped in the production of anti-Jewish propaganda such asThe International Jew.[45]
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After thefall of the Soviet Union, thenationalist andmonarchist movements were reborn in Russian society. In 1992, Alexander Shtilmark (former member ofPamyat) decided to found a modern Black Hundred movement.[46]
The movement maintains contacts with other Russian nationalist organizations (like theRussian Imperial Movement and theUnion of Orthodox Banner-Bearers) and also participated in the early stages of theRusso-Ukrainian War on the side of pro-Russian separatists.[47]
The Black Hundreds' militants were organized into paramilitary groups, one of which took the name of 'Yellow Shirts,' anticipating the Brown and Black Shirts of Germany and Italy.
July 1, 1909, to June 30, 1910, Issue 1910–1911
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