ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the roles of the chief agencies in their charge, the local police and the army, which were not only widely deployed in 1905 but, once on site at pogroms, exercised wide discretion and often, lethal force. It treats the police and troops—their deployment, decisions, resources, and actions—to assess and estimate their influence on pogrom outcomes. The function of the police as defenders of the existing political order certainly accounts for their usually conservative views. Pogrom records and histories even document police acting as instigators and direct participants in pogroms. For several reasons, the Russian municipal and provincial police as a whole did not perform well in the face of widespread pogrom activity in 1905, especially in October. The life and culture of modern armies are an artificially imposed condition, its purposes being to turn civilians into automatons obedient to a single will and lacking any desire but to follow orders.
