The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (review)

114 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps, by Robert Weinberg. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 272 pp. $29.95. In this exhaustively researched study, Robert Weinberg examines the workers ofOdessa in the course of the revolution of 1905. Weinberg traces workers' protests against onerous and unstable work conditions, and particularly the transformation of their demands from strictly economic to political. Centrally, Weinberg contends that the particular structure ofearly twentieth-century Russia inextricably linked economic improvement to political reform, and he suggests that workers' politicization was prompted by economic hardship, fueled by liberal and radical political movements, tempered by the promise ofgovernment reform, and finally suppressed by force ofarms. Readers with scant background in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Russian history will follow Weinberg's narrative with little difficulty, while scholars with more knowledge of the period will appreciate the subtlety with which he places events in Odessa into the larger context of the revolutionary situation throughout the Russian Empire. Weinberg devotes three chapters to the period before 1905, offering a vital backdrop. He conveys the importance of Odessa's port and the port's influence on patterns of migration and enterprise, particularly as tsarist officials took great interest in promoting settlement in Odessa. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Odessa claimed a multi-ethnic composition, and its location within the Pale of Settlement resulted in a disproportionately high Jewish population: ethnic conflict emerged as a painful feature of Odessan life, with anti-Jewish pogroms erupting repeatedly before the turn of the century. Odessa's economy suffered a severe downturn in the 1890s, and unemployment became a persistent feature of Odessan life. As employment opportunities diminished, Weinberg suggests, workers increasingly segregated themselves according to trade and consequently according to ethnicity. Odessa workers' earliest collective response to economic hardship manifested itselfin mutual aid societies. Weinberg argues that the societies, while generally unsuccessful in organizing resistance to employers, gave workers experience in cooperative effort and organization. Generally mutual aid societies limited their demands to calls for improvements in the workplace. Yet as radicals frequented worker meetings and demonstrations , the organizations offered many workers their first exposure to revolutionary propaganda. Clearly the exposure made its mark: in May of 1905 Odessa workers began to participate in mass action against local officials, and in June they held a mass street demonstration in conjunction with the landing of the mutinous Battleship Potemkin at the Odessa port. Book Reviews 115 Weinberg makes a compelling argument that the protests of May and June are best understood as the offspring of pre-1905 labor organization and describes how prominent labor activity continued into the autumn. Worker demonstrations became particularly tense in October when the regime offered limited concessions and workers who considered the tsarist compromise inadequate found themselves in the position of blatantly demonstrating against the regime. According to Weinberg, many Russians considered Jews to have been the driving force behind antigovernment rallies from July to October, and Russian loyalists rose up in the bloody pogrom ofOctober 18-22 in which thousands were killed or injured. Weinberg analyzes the role of police in instigating the pogrom, the role of workers in perpetrating the violence, self-defense leagues' attempts to stop the attacks, and city officials' failure to protect Odessan Jews. Odessa's Jews implicated local police in recruiting pogromists, although official government explanations leaned more toward loyal supporters of the tsar acting to protest contemporary Jewish demonstrations against the regime. The picture, in fact, is a complex one, and Weinberg contends that the variety of causes that contributed to the outbreak of violence included a history of government toleration of anti-Jewish groups, economic hardship, and the inept response oflocal officials. Granting thatJews participated in great numbers in anti-tsarist activity, Weinberg argues that it was the combined pressures of economic and political crisis that prompted the 1905 pogrom. Tensions continued to run high in Odessa during the final months of 1905 when various socialist groups agitated among Odessan workers. As one consequence of party organizing, Weinberg argues, workers in Odessa began to recognize their status vis-a-vis politically active workers in other parts of the Empire. In...