[Footnote 1:  On the term New Russia see p. 40, n. 3.]

[Footnote 2:  The Greek-Orthodox Passover lasts officially three days, but an additional day is celebrated by the populace.]

At that moment the pogrom began.  The organizers of the riots sent a drunken Russian into a saloon kept by a Jew, where he began to make himself obnoxious.  When the saloon-keeper pushed the trouble maker out into the street, the crowd, which was waiting outside, began to shout:  “The Zhyds are beating our people,” and threw themselves upon the Jews who happened to pass by.

This evidently was the prearranged signal for the pogrom.  The Jewish stores in the market-place were attacked and demolished, and the goods looted or destroyed.  At first, the police, assisted by the troops, managed somehow to disperse the rioters.  But on the second day the pogrom was renewed with greater energy and better leadership, amidst the suspicious inactivity both of the military and police authorities.  The following description of the events is taken from the records of the official investigation which were not meant for publication and are therefore free from the bureaucratic prevarications characteristic of Russian public documents: 

During the night from the 15th to the 16th of April, an attack was made upon Jewish houses, primarily upon liquor stores, on the outskirts of the town, on which occasion one Jew was killed.  About seven o’clock in the morning, on April 16, the excesses were renewed, spreading with extraordinary violence all over the city.  Clerks, saloon and hotel waiters, artisans, drivers, flunkeys, day laborers in the employ of the Government, and soldiers on furlough—­all of these joined the movement.  The city presented an extraordinary sight:  streets covered with feathers and obstructed with broken furniture which had been thrown out of the residences; houses with broken doors and windows; a raging mob, running about yelling and whistling in all directions and continuing its work of destruction without let or hindrance, and, as a finishing touch to this picture, complete indifference displayed by the local non-Jewish inhabitants to the havoc wrought before their eyes.  The troops which had been summoned to restore order were without definite instructions, and, at each attack of the mob on another house, would wait for orders of the military or police authorities, without knowing what to do.  As a result of this attitude of the military, the turbulent mob, which was demolishing the houses and stores of the Jews before the eyes of the troops, without being checked by them, was bound to arrive at the conclusion that the excesses in which it indulged were not an illegal undertaking but rather a work which had the approval of the Government.  Toward evening the disorders increased in intensity, owing to the arrival of a large number of peasants from the adjacent villages, who were anxious to secure part of the Jewish loot.