But the Russian military authorities, seeking a scapegoat for their
own failures, eagerly seized upon the Polish stories, and gave them
official standing and wide circulation. The notorious Kuzhi incident
illustrates the methods used. The story, as first published in the
military paper “Nash Viestnik,” the official organ of the northwestern
army, on May 5 (18), 1915, in the official daily newspaper issued by
the Russian government, the “Pravitelstvenny Viestnik,” May 6 (19),
1915, and elsewhere, ran as follows:
“On the night of April 28th, in Kuzhi, northwest of Shavli, the
Germans attacked a detachment of one of our infantry regiments resting
there. This disclosed the shockingly treacherous conduct of a part
of the population—especially the Jewish part—towards our troops.
The Jews had concealed German soldiers in their cellars before our
troops arrived, and at a signal they set fire to Kuzhi on all sides.
The Germans, leaping out of the cellars, rushed to the house which
our regimental commander was occupying. At the same time two of the
battalions, supported by cavalry, attacked our outposts and captured
the village. The house in which the commander had his headquarters
soon fell in. Colonel Vavilov ordered that the regimental colors be
burned, and, refusing to surrender to the Germans, was killed. Our
reinforcements then arrived, drove the Germans out of Kuzhi at the
point of the bayonet, and saved the remnants of the burning standard.
All the local inhabitants who had taken part in this terrible affair
were brought before a court-martial and the ringleaders will be sent
to Siberia. This sad incident again demonstrates the need of keeping
constant guard, particularly over all those Jewish towns which have at
any time been held by the enemy.”
This story, in all its circumstantial details, was spread broadcast
throughout the Empire, in all the official and semi-official organs of
the government, on the bulletin boards, wherever the Russian populace
congregates. By military order it was brought to the attention of
every man in the army, down to the last private. Country editors were
ordered to reprint the story under threat of prosecution. Not a hamlet
in all Russia but shuddered at the monstrous treachery of the Jews. In
Tashkent the clergy offered a prayer in the Cathedral, petitioning God
to deliver the Russian army from the machinations of Jewish traitors.
Even the Liberals, usually sympathetic toward the Jews, were silent, as
no defense was possible in so black a case.
Then it occurred to someone to make an investigation. Three deputies of
the Duma went to the spot in person and discovered that =in the entire
village of Kuzhi there were only six Jewish families—all but one living
in miserable huts without cellar space; that the one cellar in a Jewish
house was only nine by seven and too low for a man to stand upright in;
that it could not possibly hide enough German soldiers to attack, much
less annihilate, a Russian detachment; that the few Jews of the town
had left it, with the permission of the military authorities, on April
27th, the day before the town had been attacked by the Germans, and
were known to have spent the night of April 27–28 at another village,
Minstok; and, finally, that no Jews had been tried, convicted or
executed at Kuzhi; in brief, that the story was, from beginning to end,
an absolute fabrication.=
This Kuzhi story was branded as a lie by the Jewish Deputy Friedman
in the Duma on July 19 (August 1), 1915. He was supported by the
non-Jewish Deputy Kerensky, who denounced the fabrication in these
words:
=“I declare now from this rostrum that I personally went to the town
of Kuzhi to verify the accusation that the Jewish population of Kuzhi
had committed a treacherous assault on the Russian army, and I feel it
my duty to reiterate that this is but an ignominious slander. There
was no such case, and under local conditions there could be none.”=
But the refutation of the lie was not spread throughout Russia. It has
been consistently suppressed by the military censor, and to this day
the great majority of the Russian people, in the absence of disproof,
fully believe the story.