There was no one to check these crowds; the troops and police were helpless.  They had all lost heart, and were convinced that it was Impossible to suppress the disorders with the means at hand.  At eight o’clock at night a rain came down accompanied by a cold wind which helped in a large measure to disperse the crowd.  At eleven o’clock fresh troops arrived on the spot.  On the morning of April 17 a new battalion of infantry came, and from that day on public order was no longer violated in Yelisavetgrad.

The news of the “victory” so easily won over the Jews of Yelisavetgrad aroused the dormant pogrom energy in the unenlightened Russian masses.  In the latter part of April riots took place in many villages of the Yelisavetgrad district and in several towns and townlets in the adjoining government of Kherson.  In the villages, the work of destruction was limited to the inns kept by Jews—­many peasants believing that they were acting in accordance with imperial orders.  In the towns and townlets, all Jewish houses and stores were demolished and their goods looted.  In the town of Ananyev, in the government of Kherson, the people were incited by a resident named Lashchenko, who assured his townsmen that the central Government had given orders to massacre the Jews because they had murdered the Tzar, and that these orders were purposely kept back by the local administration.  The instigator was seized by the police, but was wrested from it by the crowd which thereupon threw itself upon the Jews.  The riots resulted in some two hundred ruined houses and stores in the outskirts of the town, where the Jewish proletariat was cooped up.  The central part of the town, where the more well-to-do Jews had their residences, was guarded by the police and by a military detachment, and therefore remained intact.

3.  THE POGROM AT KIEV

The movement gained constantly in momentum, and the instincts of the mob became more and more unbridled.  The “Mother of Russian cities,” ancient Kiev, where at the dawn of Russian history the Jews, together with the Khazars, had been the banner-bearers of civilization, became the scene of the lawless fury of savage hordes.  Here the pogrom was carefully prepared by a secret organization which spread the rumor that the new Tzar had given orders to exterminate the Jews, who had murdered his father, and that the civil and military authorities would render assistance to the people, whilst those who would fail to comply with the will of the Tzar would meet with punishment.  The local authorities, with Governor-General Drenteln at their head, who was a reactionary and a fierce Jew-hater, were aware not only of the imminence of the pogrom, but also of the day selected for it, Sunday, April 26.