The Black Hundreds are ... The Black Hundred Program

People who studied in Soviet schools clearly knew that the Black Hundreds were obscurantists and pogromists. There were no doubts about this, just like the desire to look at people from some other perspective on people who had organized bloody pogroms in the cities of Russia, especially in Moscow and Odessa.

The ideas of the Black Hundreds are still alive now. In a particular stratum of the population, there is interest in them. Our time is wonderful because you can look at any question, taking into account different points of view, and try to form your own opinion about this movement.

Prominent figures sympathizing with the Black Hundreds

It is interesting to get acquainted with the program of the Black Hundreds, if only because the wife and daughter of FM Dostoevsky, who spoke of the impossibility of a good, based at least on a drop of the shed blood of the child, were active Black Hundreds. The archpriest John of Kronstadt and the artist Victor Vasnetsov treated them. Mendeleyev, Michurin, the captain of the cruiser Varyag Rudnev are the Black Hundreds, not to mention the 500 figures of the Orthodox Church who were later referred to as "new martyrs and confessors of Russia." Among them was the future Patriarch Metropolitan Tikhon Bellavin.

Healthy roots

So, there was some kind of positive idea in the program of this movement? And what kind of name is this, which in the course of time acquired such an awesome color? Historian Vladimir Mohnach said that initially "the Black Hundreds are representatives of urban democratic circles."

Why is that? Because in tsarist Russia the internal division of the city was called a hundred. There were white hundreds, to which belonged the higher strata of the population, who did not pay taxes to the state, and black - paid. Of the representatives of this urban democracy (merchants, artisans), Kuzma Minin's squads were formed , expelling Poles from the Kremlin and contributing to the end of the Time of Troubles in Russia.

One of the ideologists

And the very reactionary direction of 1900-1917 is due to the name of VA Gringmut, one of the main ideologists of the Black-Hundred movement. He was such a vivid representative that he did not remain in history as a right-wing radical politician, but as a pogromist and obscurantist (obscurantist, hostile to science, progress and enlightenment), for which he was brought to trial by the tsarist government in 1906.

According to Gringmut, the Black Hundreds are ardent fighters for preserving the inviolability of the autocracy, true, on the basis of great-power chauvinism, which resulted specifically in anti-Semitism.

One of the estimates of the movement of a contemporary

At the beginning of the century this extremely reactionary movement was so active that it received the name "Black-Hundred Terror of 1905-1907". At that time, they committed the murders of M. Ya. Gertsenshtein and GB Iollos (members of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party) and no less resonant assassination attempts against PN Milyukov and ex-premier Witte, whom some representatives of the movement (the same Gringmut) Denoted as one of their main enemies. S. Yu. Witte also believed that the Black Hundreds are, in effect, representatives of a patriotic organization whose ideas are not based on reason and nobility, but on passions, and that they were simply not fortunate with the leaders, among whom there were many rascals and people with Dirty thoughts and feelings. With such a high syllable, he spoke of pogromists, who organized a massacre. Entire Jewish families were killed under the slogan "Beat the Jews, save Russia!". But the former prime minister, referring to the patriotism of the Black Hundreds, evidently had in mind the starting idea of the movement, which is based on the slogans of the Slavophiles about the identity of Russia and its own, different from the west, development path.

Support of movement

So who are they? The disparate reactionary extreme right-wing organizations in Russia in 1906-1917 are the Black Hundreds. They did not manage, fortunately, to unite in one force, which would increase their capabilities many times. Before the emergence of a common name, the disparate parties called themselves "patriots", "truly Russian", "monarchists".

The largest unions of the Black Hundreds were the "Union of the Russian People" (leader - AI Dubrovin), "Russian Monarchist Party" (founded by VA Gringmut). One of the founders of the clerical-conservative organization "Union of Michael Archangel" is VM Purishkevich. It should be noted that the activity of the disunited and often opposing Black-Hundred organizations was directed and financed by the "Council of the United Nobility", established in May 1906 with the full support of the tsarist government. It should also be noted that the police of the Russian Empire considered the Black-Hundred brigades as allies and in their work fully relied on them. Simultaneously with the "Council of the United Nobility" in Moscow, the Black-Hundred organization "Union of Russian People" was formed. The founders and leaders were the Counts of the Sheremetyev brothers, the princes Trubetskoi and Shcherbatov. Prince Dmitry Pavlovich Golitsyn (Muravlin) was also a Black Hundred. Such "glorious Russian surnames" were associated with the Black Hundreds. All of them were attracted by the main idea embodied in the program of the movement: the inviolability of the monarchy, the unity of the autocracy with the people.

Limitless devotion to the autocracy

The extreme monarchists, also called the Black Hundreds, were a conservative camp of Russia, which, according to some sources, had 410 thousand people after the defeat of the 1905-1907 revolution. The program of the Black Hundreds was based on the theory of the so-called official nationality, sponsored by the Minister of Education of Russia SS Uvarov (first half of the XIX century). He developed a three-term formula, which can be regarded as the main idea of Uvarov's theory: Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality. Unlimited autocracy, like Orthodoxy, which the Black Hundreds regarded as primordially Russian beginnings, had to remain unshakable, and Russia did not need reforms at all.

The allowances allowed by the Black Hundreds

However, some of their programs included various freedoms - creeds, words, assemblies, seals, unions and untouchability of the individual. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the large number of people sympathizing with the Black Hundreds. Extremely uncompromising was the agrarian program of the Black Hundreds, which provides for selling to the peasants only vacant state lands (no confiscation of landlords), development of rental and credit systems.

The most, as it turned out later, the national question was a failure in the program of the Black Hundreds . A single and indivisible Russia, in their opinion, had to rely on great-power chauvinism, which took extreme forms and degenerated into militant anti-Semitism.

Powerful support

The ideas of the Black Hundreds were carried to the masses by such printed publications as The Russian Flag and Moscow Gazette, Pochaevsky Leaflet and Kolokol. And also "Zemshchina", "Groza" and "Veche", "Kievlyanin" and "Grazhdanin". Support is more than powerful. They contributed to the fact that the program of the Black Hundreds became close and understandable to a huge number of landowners, representatives of the clergy, merchants, workers and peasants, artisans and representatives of both the small and large urban bourgeoisie, Cossacks and petty bourgeois - absolutely all strata of Russian society.

The end of the movement and its leaders

After the brutal pogroms, the majority of supporters recoiled from the Black Hundreds, and after 1917 the movement fell into decay, and Soviet power was completely banned. The Black Hundreds, whose leaders and ideologists were recognized as enemies of the people, actively fought against the Soviet power, and in the years of the Second World War they were on the side of the Hitlerites. Among the major figures of this movement are, first of all, AI Dubrovin, VM Purishkevich, VA Gringmut, NE Markov. And also PF Bulacel (lawyer), II Vostorgov (priest), engineer AI Trishchaty, Prince MK Shakhovskoy, monk Iliodor.

Octobrists

As noted above, unity in the ranks of this movement has never been observed, many unions differed from each other not only by names, but also by programs. Thus, members of the "Union of October 17", or the Black Hundred Octobrists, occupied a special place among the political parties of Russia - they were located between conservatives and liberals, why they were called conservative liberals. The party of the big financial and commercial-industrial bourgeoisie was headed by AI Guchkov, MV Rodzianko and VV Shulgin.

At the heart of their program lay the royal manifesto of October 17, 1905. From the extreme right-wing Black Hundreds, the Octobrists differed in that they advocated a constitutional monarchy in which the power of the tsar would be limited to the basic law. They differed from the extreme right and the fact that, in favor of indivisible Russia, the right to autonomy for Finland was still recognized. And in the peasant question they advocated the compulsory alienation of part of the landed estates for ransom.

Cadets

If the Octobrists were on the extreme right wing, then on the left flank of the liberal movement the Cadets (Constitutional Democratic Party) were located, the organizer and ideological leader of which was PN Miliukov. The party, whose main strategist he was, was called the "Party of People's Freedom". Their program paid much attention to the rights and freedoms of citizens. In their view, the future state system of Russia was to become a constitutional-parliamentary monarchy. The Cadets, the Octobrists, the Black Hundreds are more or less large parties among dozens of others, such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, non-generals, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, who numbered dozens in Russia at the beginning of the last century, right up to the revolution. But the Cadets, the Octobrists and the Black Hundreds united the attitude toward the monarchy, the inviolability of which was placed at the head of their programs.