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Multicultural Tensions in Kazan
Below is a journal entry from a young man who witnessed the event.
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October 28, 1906
It is almost too horrible to write, but write I must in order to begin to confront the terrible grief I will never conquer. For the past year to this day, I have been mourning the deaths of my neighbors at the hands of the police who unjustly claimed their lives on October 28, 1905.
The night began like any other. As usual, the streets were empty except for police and Cossacks, and a dark gloom hung in the sleeping silence.
Begun late at night, the horrific pillage continued unabated throughout the next day and night. Those who dared to venture onto the streets were shot without question, and soldiers drunkenly fired shots through glass windows. I heard the explosive music of glass shattering in the neighboring houses.
After the death of my father from illness three years ago, it has been my role, as the oldest son, to steward our family. I felt the depths of that responsibility in this time of emergency—while my mother collapsed in tears into a chair at the sound of the first gunshot, I gathered my siblings and herded them under the bed, far from the windows. I then gently found the frail hand of my weeping mother and led her down to the comparative safety of the shelter of the ground underneath her bed.
Crawling on the ground as the sounds of breaking glass, screams, and gunshots reverberated down the street, I made my way over to the window. Careful to keep my body behind the wall as a shield from any potential bullets shot through our window, I reached for the edge of the curtain and twitched it back an inch. With my head pressed against the window frame, I sought to decipher the commotion.
In the window across the street from our room, a small light flickered as a match was struck. The shadowy profile of a woman fell across the curtain, and I recognized the head of our neighbor, Anna. I was not the only person to notice, and senseless bullets whizzed through her window. She shrieked, and the light extinguished.
I screamed out in disbelief, and it felt as if all the air in my lungs had been punched out—horror filled my soul. I was undone. The acceptance of Anna’s possible death as my new reality seemed impossible. But I was forced to curtail my shock until a later time as a peppering of bullets thudded into our wall and window. I cursed my foolhardiness for bringing attention to our room with my shout and prayed to God for safety.
Glass rained throughout the room, shards slicing my skin. I kept my back against the wall and dared not move again for the rest of the night. Tears streamed down my face at the terror destroying our peaceful Waskresenchaia Street, and the muffled sobs of my family under the bed kept my heart ice-cold.
Long after the final shots had ceased, I warned my family to stay inside and ventured out from our residence. Blood had turned the snow red, and I cast my eyes away from the bodies strewn about.
I found my friend Pyotr at his home, and I learned from him that many shops had been pillaged during the night. Although they had alerted the authorities, their pleas for help went unanswered, and no leaders had sought to quell the violence. The riots had been unorganized, and no one seemed to know what had sparked the rampage.
The Cossacks and police had fired upon the district court and private residences, aiming at lighted windows. My skin crawled with overwhelming despair—how could the sanctity of our world have been so swiftly destroyed? If police would not, who would protect the safety of our society? While I responded with defeated misery, Pyotr was fired up into action. His blood boiling, he shouted that we must pursue justice.
We leave his home and gather together a coalition of enraged men. Others, strangers to me, join us along the way. News spreads like wildfire, and I learn that the Municipal Council visited the Governor of Kazan this morning. In their meeting, the Governor informed the Council that the Chief of Police has resigned. The Governor instigated an investigation, and all Cossacks and troops have been confined to their barracks. In addition, municipal authorities have been granted permission to form militias.
In this way, I find myself a militiaman. Pyotr hollers and jumps, pumping the crowd into a frenzied wrath. I fear the men around me may enact brutal retaliation, so I am relieved when their pursuit of revenge stops after removing all arms from the police bureau and relocating them to the municipal building. Unsatisfied and angry, the men disperse and an uneasy peace is restored.
A year later, the anger nurtured in the hearts of every citizen of Kazan is alive and well. I fear it will just take one spark to burst the entire community into fiery bloodshed. The lust for revenge has not abated. Indeed, Pytor continues to spit on the feet of any police or Cossack he encounters, leading to many a viscous fistfight. Under the bubbling surface of our coexisting communities, horrific memories of that fateful night threaten to rip apart the seams of Kazan.
