No. 269.
Mr. Hoffman to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
St. Petersburg, April 29, 1882. (Received May 15.)
Sir: The anti-Jew riots have commenced again in the south of Russia. They have been marked, as heretofore, by great and wanton destruction of property, but by little personal violence.
The scene of the worst disturbances has been the town of Balta, a town of about 25,000 inhabitants, nearly three-quarters of whom are Israelites. It lies about 125 miles northwest of Odessa.
The riot is reported to have been from some trifling cause, such as the refusal of a Russian peasant to pay for the liquor he had drunk in a wine-shop kept by a Jew.
The police, which was very weak, appears to have interfered simply to prevent the Jews from defending themselves.
At first the rioters did not number more than two hundred, many of them boys. But soon the peasants began to come in from the country, joined the rioters, and gave a more serious turn to the affair. The riot lasted two days before troops arrived from Odessa to quell it. During this time, of the thousand houses occupied by Jews, all, except perhaps fifty, were gutted and sacked. As far as ascertained, one Israelite only lost his life. But the amount of suffering undergone by over 15,000 people, men, women, and children, destitute of food and lodging is painful to contemplate.
I am satisfied that the Russian Government is truly anxious to put a stop to these riots. * * * It is reported that in the country far from garrison towns the German inhabitants are very uneasy, and the saying is not uncommon, “After the Jews, the Germans.”
But the position of the Russian Government in this matter is an exceedingly difficult one. In a conversation with General Ignatieff a few days since, he told me that the government had received the reports of the numerous local boards appointed by it last year to suggest measures for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews; that they had not only by a majority, but unanimously, recommended their expulsion from the empire. “We have then,” he said, “on the one hand 5,000,000 Jews, Russian subjects, clamoring to be freed from all special restraints, and we have on the other 85,000,000 Russian subjects clamoring to have the 5,000,000 expelled from the empire. What is to be done in such a case?”
I am, sir, &c.,