People who studied in Soviet schools clearly knew that the Black Hundreds were obscurantists and rioters. There was no doubt about this, nor was there a desire from some other angle to look at people who staged bloody pogroms in Russian cities, especially in Moscow and Odessa.
The ideas of the Black Hundreds are still alive. A certain layer of the population is interested in them. Our time is remarkable in that 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 Black Hundreds program, if only because the wife and daughter of F.M. Dostoevsky, who spoke about the impossibility of the good, which is based on at least a drop of spilled blood of a child, were active Black Hundreds. Archpriest John of Kronstadt and the artist Viktor Vasnetsov belonged to them. Mendeleev, Michurin, the captain of the cruiser "Varyag" Rudnev - these are the Black Hundreds, not to mention the 500 figures of the Orthodox Church, 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 positive idea in the program of this movement? And what is this name such that over time has acquired such an awesome connotation? Historian Vladimir Mokhnach says that initially "the Black Hundreds are representatives of urban democratic circles."
Why is that? Because in tsarist Russia, a hundred was called the internal division of the city. There were white hundreds, which included the upper strata of the population who did not pay taxes to the state, and black ones who paid. Of the representatives of this urban democracy (merchants, artisans), Kuzma Minin's detachments were formed , expelling the Poles from the Kremlin and contributing to the cessation of the Time of Troubles in Russia.
One of the ideologists
And the reactionary movement of 1900-1917 itself was named after V. A. Gringmouth, one of the main ideologists of the Black-Hundred movement. He was such a vivid representative that in history he remained not as a right-wing political figure, but as a pogrom and obscurantist (obscurantist hostile to science, progress and education), for which he was brought to trial by the tsarist government in 1906.
According to Gringmouth, the Black Hundreds are fiery fighters for preserving the inviolability of the autocracy, however, on the basis of great-power chauvinism that has spilled specifically into anti-Semitism.
One of the assessments of the movement by a contemporary
At the beginning of the century, this extremely reactionary movement was so active that it was called the Black Hundred Terror of 1905-1907. At this time, they committed the murders of M. Ya. Herzenstein and G. B. Iollos (members of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party) and no less resonant assassinations of P. N. Milyukov and ex-Prime Minister Witte, whom some representatives of the movement (the same Gringmouth) designated as one of their main enemies. S. Yu. Witte, on the other hand, believed that the Black Hundreds were essentially representatives of a patriotic organization, whose ideas are based not on reason and nobility, but on passions, and that they were simply unlucky with leaders, among whom there were many crooks and people with dirty thoughts and feelings. With such a high syllable, he spoke of the pogroms who staged a massacre. Entire Jewish families died under the slogan “Beat the Jews, save Russia!”. But the ex-prime minister, speaking of the patriotism of the Black Hundreds, obviously had in mind the initial idea of the movement, which is based on the slogans of the Slavophiles about the identity of Russia and its own development path that is different from the West.
Motion support
So who are they? The fragmented reactionary extreme right-wing organizations in Russia from 1906-1917 are the Black Hundreds. Fortunately, they did not manage to unite in one force, which would increase their capabilities many times over. Before the appearance of the common name, scattered parties called themselves “patriots,” “true Russians,” “monarchists.”
The largest associations of the Black Hundreds were the Union of the Russian People (leader - A. I. Dubrovin), the “Russian Monarchist Party” (founder - V. A. Gringmouth). One of the founders of the clerical-conservative organization "Union of the Archangel Michael" becomes V. M. Purishkevich. It should be noted that the activities of disparate and often warring Black Hundred organizations were directed and funded by the “Council of the United Nobility,” created 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 squads as allies and relied entirely on them in their work. At the same time as 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 brothers Sheremetyevs, princes Trubetskoy and Shcherbatov. Prince Dmitry Pavlovich Golitsyn (Muravlin) was also Black Hundred. These "glorious Russian surnames" were associated with the Black Hundreds. All of them were attracted by the main idea laid down in the program of the movement - the inviolability of the monarchy, the unity of the autocracy with the people.
Unlimited devotion to autocracy
The extreme monarchists, the so-called Black Hundreds, were a conservative camp in Russia, which, according to some reports, totaled up to 410 thousand people after the defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907. The Black Hundreds program basically relied on the theory of the so-called official nationality, authored by the Minister of Education of Russia S. S. Uvarov (first half of the 19th century). He developed a three-term formula, which can be considered as the main idea of the Uvarov theory: Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. Unlimited autocracy, like Orthodoxy, which the Black Hundreds considered originally Russian principles, should have remained unshakable, and Russia did not need reforms at all.
Relief allowed by the Black Hundreds
However, some of their programs provided for various freedoms - religion, speech, assembly, press, unions and personal integrity. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the large number of people sympathizing with the Black Hundreds. The Black Hundreds agrarian program was extremely uncompromising, providing for the sale to peasants of only vacant state lands (no confiscation of landlords), development of rental and credit systems.
The most, as it turned out later, the national issue was the failure in the Black Hundreds program . A united and indivisible Russia, in their opinion, should have been based 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 print media such as the Russian Banner and the Moscow Gazette, the Pochaev Leaf and the Bell. And also “Zemshchina”, “Thunderstorm” and “Veche”, “Kyivan” and “Citizen”. Support is more than powerful. They contributed to the fact that the Black Hundreds program became close and understandable to a huge number of landowners, clergymen, merchants, workers and peasants, artisans and representatives of both the small and large urban bourgeoisie, Cossacks and philistines - to absolutely all sections of Russian society.
The end of the movement and its leaders
After the brutal pogroms, most of the supporters recoiled from the Black Hundreds, and after 1917 the movement fell into complete decline, and the Soviet government was completely banned. The Black Hundreds, whose leaders and ideologues were recognized as enemies of the people, actively fought against the Soviet regime, and during the Second World War they sided with the Nazis. The major figures of this movement are primarily A. I. Dubrovin, V. M. Purishkevich, V. A. Gringmut, N. E. Markov. And also P.F. Bulatzel (lawyer), I.I. Vostorgov (priest), engineer A.I. Trishchaty, Prince M.K. Shakhovskaya, 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 in names, but also in programs. So, the members of the Union of October 17 party, or the Black Hundred Octobrists, occupied a special place among the political parties of Russia - they were located between conservatives and liberals, which is why they were called conservative liberals. The party of the large financial and commercial-industrial bourgeoisie was headed by A. I. Guchkov, M. V. Rodzianko and V. V. Shulgin.
Their program was based on the royal manifesto of October 17, 1905. The Octobrists differed from the extreme right of the Black Hundreds in that they advocated a constitutional monarchy, in which the tsar’s power would be limited to the basic law. They differed from the extreme right and in that, speaking for an indivisible Russia, Finland nevertheless recognized the right to autonomy. And on the peasant question, they advocated the forced alienation of part of the landlords' land for ransom.
Cadets
If the Octobrists were on the extreme right wing, then the Cadets (constitutional-democratic party), whose organizer and ideological leader was PN N. Milyukov, were on the left flank of the liberal movement. The party, the main strategist of which he was, was called the "Party of Popular Freedom." In their program, much attention was paid to the rights and freedoms of citizens. In their opinion, the constitutional-parliamentary monarchy should have become the future state system of Russia . The Cadets, Octobrists, Black Hundreds are more or less large parties among dozens of others, such as the Socialist Revolutionaries, neo-Narodniks, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, who in Russia at the beginning of the last century, up to the revolution, there were dozens. But the Cadets, Octobrists and Black Hundreds were united by their attitude to the monarchy, the inviolability of which was put at the head of their programs.