Black Hundreds#Modern version

The term was intended to be pejorative in revolutionary newspapers, but adherents used it in their own literature. They traced the term back to the "black lands", where peasants, merchants, and craftsmen paid taxes to the government (compare to Black council), meanwhile lands owned by the nobility and church were called "white lands"; the term "hundred" (sotnya) was used to refer to a feudal administrative division. In the right wing extremist imagination, it was the loyal people of the Black Hundreds who gathered to fight Poles and traitors when it was needed.{{cite book |last1=Dafinger |first1=Johannes |last2=Florin |first2=Moritz |title=A Transnational History of Right Wing Terrorism: Political Violence and the Far Right in Eastern and Western Europe since 1900 |date=2022 |publisher=Routledge |location=United Kingdom|pages=24–25}}

Revolutionary newspapers identified the Black Hundreds as a threat, describing them as "hooligan gangs" paid by the government to threaten political opponents. The Menshevik leader Julius Martov feared that the government would bribe lower class individuals to act against the social revolutionaries of the time. The term "Black Hundreds" started to appear in newspapers around 1905, along with warnings that the government would mobilize the Black Hundreds in pursuit of mass murder, and would even resort to inciting anti-Jewish pogroms and strife between different religious groups. They alleged that the Black Hundreds were being organized by the police, and called for resistance. The term became more closely associated with pogrom-like violence after thousands of people were killed in attacks on demonstrations, public assemblies, and in the anti-Semitic pogroms that followed the October Manifesto.

• "Svjashchjennaja druzhina" (Священнaя дружинa, or the Holy Brigade){{Cn|date=March 2024}} and "Russkoye sobraniye" (Русское собрание, or Russian Assembly) in Saint Petersburg are considered by the Russian historian Anatoly Stepanov to be predecessors of the Black Hundreds. Starting in 1900, the two organizations united representatives of conservative intellectuals, government officials, Russian Orthodox clergy and landowners.{{cite book |last=Степанов |first=Анатолий |title=Черная сотня |language=ru |chapter=Русское Собрание |chapter-url=https://ruskline.ru/monitoring_smi/2001/01/15/russkoe_sobranie/ |archive-date=2024-03-07 |access-date=2024-03-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307210628/https://ruskline.ru/monitoring_smi/2001/01/15/russkoe_sobranie/ |url-status=live }} A number of Black Hundred organizations formed during and after the Russian Revolution of 1905, such as:
• "Soyuz russkogo naroda" (Союз русского народа, or Union of the Russian People) in St. Petersburg,
• "Soyuz russkikh lyudey" (Союз русских людей, or Union of the Russians) in Moscow,
• "Russkaya monarkhicheskaya partiya" (Русская монархическая партия, or Russian Monarchist Party) in Moscow and elsewhere,
• "Obshchestvo aktivnoy borby s revolyutsiyey" (Общество активной борьбы с революцией, or Society of Active Struggle Against Revolution) in Moscow,
• "Belyy dvuglavyy oryol" (Белый двуглавый орёл, or White Two-headed Eagle) in Odessa,

and others.{{cite book |last=Степанов |first=С. А. |url=http://read.virmk.ru/p/paty_rus/index.htm |title=Političeskie partii Rossii: istorija i sovremennostʹ ; učebnik dlja istoričeskich i gumanitarnych fakulʹtetov vysšich učebnych zavedenij |date=2000 |publisher=ROSSPEN |isbn=978-5-8243-0068-0 |editor-last=Zevelëv |editor-first=Aleksandr Izralʹevič |location=Moskva |language=ru |chapter=Гл. II. Черносотенные союзы и организации |chapter-url=http://read.virmk.ru/p/paty_rus/02.htm |archive-date=2016-01-30 |access-date=2024-03-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160130115057/http://read.virmk.ru/p/paty_rus/index.htm |url-status=live }}{{cite web |title=Черносотенцы |url=http://vseslova.com.ua/word/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%86%D1%8B-120572 |access-date=2024-03-06 |website=VseslovA |language=ru |archive-date=2024-03-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307210628/http://vseslova.com.ua/word/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%86%D1%8B-120572 |url-status=live }}{{cite web |title=Черносотенцы |url=https://duma.tomsk.ru/document/view/977 |access-date=2024-03-06 |website=Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast |language=ru |archive-date=2024-03-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307210628/https://duma.tomsk.ru/document/view/977 |url-status=live }}

Members of the Black Hundred organizations came from different social strata—such as landowners, clergymen, the high and petty bourgeoisie, merchants, artisans, workers, and the so-called "declassed elements". The Postoyanny Sovyet Ob'yedinnyonnykh dvoryanskikh obshchshestv Rossii (United Gentry Council) guided the activities of the black-hundredists; the Tsarist regime provided moral and financial support to the movement. The Black Hundreds were founded on a devotion to the Tsar, church, and motherland, expressed previously by the motto of Tsar Nicholas I: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" (Pravoslaviye, Samoderzhaviye i Narodnost). The Black Hundreds conducted oral propaganda: in churches by holding special services and during meetings, lectures, and demonstrations. Such propaganda provoked anti-Semitic sentiments and monarchic "exaltation" and incited pogroms and terrorist acts, performed by the Black Hundreds' paramilitary groups, sometimes known as "Yellow Shirts".{{cite book|last=Allensworth|first=Wayne|title=The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia|year=1998|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rd7kfSrXICAC|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|publication-date=1998|page=127|isbn=9780847690039|access-date=2015-12-01|quote=The Black Hundreds' militants were organized into paramilitary groups, one of which took the name of 'Yellow Shirts,' anticipating the Brown and Black Shirts of Germany and Italy.}}{{cite web |url=https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/tsarist-government/ |title=Tsarist government |website= Alpha History |date=December 3, 2012}}

File:Black-hundred1907.jpg

The Black Hundred movement published newspapers, such as Znamya (The Banner) or Russkoye znamya (Russian Banner), Pochayevsky Listok (The Pochayev Page), Zemshchina, Kolokol (Bell), Groza (Thunderstorm), Veche (Popular Assembly) and others. Many rightist newspapers, such as Moskovskiye vedomosti (Moscow News), Grazhdanin (Citizen) and Kievlyanin (Kievan), published their materials as well. Among the prominent leaders of the Black Hundred movement were Alexander Dubrovin, Vladimir Purishkevich, Nikolai Markov, A. I. Trishatny, Pavel Krushevan, Pavel Bulatsel, Ivan Vostorgov, M. K. Shakhovskoy, Saint John of Kronstadt, Hieromonk Iliodor, Bishop Hermogen, and others.{{cite journal |last=Weinberg |first=Robert |date=2008 |title=The Russian Right Responds to Revolution: Visual Depictions of Jews in the Black Hundred Press in Post-1905 Russia |url=https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=fac-history |journal=Swarthmore College |volume=4 |pages=17 |archive-date=2023-01-29 |access-date=2023-05-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230129160618/https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=fac-history |url-status=live }}

{{Expand section|date=January 2011}}

File:Sotnja.jpg

When two Duma delegates, Grigori Iollos (Poltava province) and Mikhail Herzenstein (b. 1859, d. 1906 in Terijoki), both from the Constitutional Democratic Party, were assassinated by members of the Black Hundreds, their press organ Russkoe Znamya declared openly that "Real Russians assassinated Herzenstein and Iollos with knowledge of officials", and expressed regret that "only two Jews perished in the crusade against revolutionaries."{{cite journal |title=A LIST OF EVENTS IN 5670 AND NECROLOGY |url=http://www.ajcarchives.org/ajc_data/files/1910_1911_4_yearreview.pdf |journal=American Jewish Yearbook |publisher=AJC Archives |access-date=August 22, 2016 |quote=July 1, 1909, to June 30, 1910, Issue 1910–1911 |archive-date=June 13, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100613100004/http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1910_1911_4_YearReview.pdf |url-status=live }} The black hundred were known to have used violence and torture on anyone they believed was a threat to the Tsar.

Members of the Black Hundreds carried out raids (with unofficial government approval) against various revolutionary groups and pogroms, including inciting pogroms against Jews.{{cite book |last1=Klier |first1=John Doyle |last2=Lambroza |first2=Shlomo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T3D7CmSOMfIC&pg=PA225 |title=Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History |date=1992 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-52851-1 |language=en}}

The historian of the Black Hundred movement Sergei Stepanov, writes that after the 1905 Russian Revolution, fighting squads of the Union of the Russian People and other extremist right-wing organizations became the weapons of the Black Hundred terror.{{cite web |title=Черносотенный террор 1905–1907 гг. // Сергей Степанов |trans-title=Black Hundred Terror 1905–1907 // Sergey Stepanov |url=https://scepsis.net/library/id_743.html |access-date=2022-07-15 |website=scepsis.net |archive-date=2022-05-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220522204133/https://scepsis.net/library/id_743.html |url-status=live }}

Radical socialist parties organized revolutionary terror in retaliation to the Black Hundred activities. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP wrote in 1905:

The fight against the Black Hundreds is an excellent type of military action, which will train the soldiers of the revolutionary army, give them their baptism of fire, and at the same time be of tremendous benefit to the revolution. Revolutionary army groups must at once find out who organises the Black Hundreds and where and how they are organised, and then, without confining themselves to propaganda (which is useful but inadequate) they must act with armed force, beat up and kill the members of the Black-Hundred gangs, blow up their headquarters, etc., etc.{{cite web |title=Lenin: Tasks of Revolutionary Army Contingents |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/oct/31i.htm |access-date=2022-07-15 |website=www.marxists.org}}

On behalf of the Saint Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, an armed attack was carried out on the Tver tea house, where the workers of the Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant, who were members of the Union of the Russian People, gathered. First, two bombs were thrown by the Bolshevik militants, and then those who ran out of the teahouse were shot with revolvers. The Bolsheviks killed two and wounded fifteen people.{{cite book |title=Первая боевая организация большевиков. 1905—1907 гг. — М., 1934. |trans-title=The first militant organization of the Bolsheviks. 1905-1907 - M., 1934. |page=221}}

Revolutionary organizations carried out many other terrorist acts, mainly against the chairmen of local departments of the Union of the Russian People. So, according to the police department, only in March 1908 in one Chernihiv province in the city of Bakhmach, a bomb was thrown at the house of the chairman of the local union of the RNC, in the city of Nizhyn the house of the chairman of the union was set on fire. The whole family died, in the village of Domyany the department's chairman was killed, two chairmen of departments were killed in Nizhyn.{{cite book |title=Циркуляр Департамента полиции от 8 марта 1908 г. // Политическая полиция и политический терроризм в России (вторая половина XIX — начало XX вв.): Сборник документов. — М.: АИРО-XXI |year=2001 |trans-title=Circular of the Police Department dated March 8, 1908 // Political police and political terrorism in Russia (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries): Collection of documents. — M.: AIRO-XXI}}

The Socialist-Revolutionaries also killed prominent Black Hundreds such as Nikolai Bogdanovich and Gavril Luzhenovsky.{{cite web |last=Иванов |first=А. |title=Луженовский Гавриил Николаевич |url=http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_l/luzhenovski_gn.php |access-date=2024-03-06 |website=www.hrono.ru |archive-date=2024-05-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240511054205/http://hrono.ru/biograf/bio_l/luzhenovski_gn.php |url-status=live }}{{cite web |last=Стогов |first=Д. |title=Богданович Николай Евгеньевич |url=http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_b/bogdanovich_ne.php |access-date=2024-03-06 |website=www.hrono.ru |archive-date=2024-05-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240507173956/http://hrono.ru/biograf/bio_b/bogdanovich_ne.php |url-status=live }}

The Black Hundreds classified Ukrainians as Russians,{{cite thesis |author=Jacob Langer |year=2007 |title=Corruption and the Counterrevolution: The Rise and Fall of the Black Hundred |work=History Dissertation, Duke University |page=19}} and attracted the support of many Russophiles who considered themselves Russian and rejected Ukrainian nationalism and a Ukrainian identity.{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Ukraine |url=http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkPath=pages/B/L/BlackHundreds.htm |title=Black Hundreds |publisher=University of Toronto, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies |access-date=2013-05-10 |archive-date=2014-03-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140311051204/http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkPath=pages/B/L/BlackHundreds.htm |url-status=live }} The Black Hundred movement actively campaigned against what it considered to be Ukrainian separatism, as well as against promoting Ukrainian culture and language in general, and against the works of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, in particular.{{cite book |title=Украинская Жизнь. — М., 1912. — № 5 |trans-title=Ukrainian Life. - M., 1912. - No. 5 |page=82}} In Odessa, the Black Hundreds shut down the local branch of the Ukrainian Prosvita society. This organization was dedicated to spreading literacy in the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian cultural awareness.

The Black Hundreds organized four all-Russian congresses to unite their forces. In October 1906, they elected the so-called glavnaya uprava (a kind of board of directors) of the new all-Russian Black Hundred organization "Ob’yedinyonniy russkiy narod" (Объединённый русский народ, or Russian People United). After 1907, however, this organization disintegrated, and the whole Black Hundreds movement became weaker as the membership rate steadily declined. After the February Revolution 1917, the remaining Black Hundred organizations were officially abolished.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Черносотенцы |encyclopedia=Great Russian Encyclopedia |url=https://old.bigenc.ru/text/4683319 |language=ru}}

After emigrating abroad, many Black Hundreds were among the main critics of the White movement. They blamed the movement for not only failing to stress monarchism as its key ideological foundation but also supposedly being run under the influence of classical liberals and Freemasons. Boris Brasol (1885–1963), a former member of the Black Hundreds, was among those who later emigrated to the United States. There he befriended industrialist Henry Ford, who gave Brasol a job on The Dearborn Independent newspaper. Brasol also helped in the production of anti-Jewish propaganda such as The International Jew.{{Cite book |title=How Russia Shaped the Modern World |author=Steven G. Marks |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2003 |pages=172–4}}

File:Москва, митинг 4 ноября 2019 06.jpg]]

File:Flag of the Black Hundreds (modern).svg

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the nationalist and monarchist movements were reborn in Russian society. In 1992, Alexander Shtilmark (former member of Pamyat) decided to found a modern Black Hundred movement.{{Cite web |last=Прибыловский |first=Владимир |title=Черная сотня |url=http://www.panorama.ru/works/vybory/party/shtil.html |access-date=2024-03-06 |website=ИИЦ «Панорама» |language=ru |archive-date=2024-03-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240307210628/http://www.panorama.ru/works/vybory/party/shtil.html |url-status=live }}

The movement maintains contacts with other Russian nationalist organizations (like the Russian Imperial Movement and the Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers) and also participated in the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War on the side of pro-Russian separatists.{{Cite web |url=https://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/04/the-black-hundreds-the-most-important-russian-group-now-active-in-ukraine/ |title=The Black Hundreds: The most important Russian group now active in Ukraine |work=Euromaidan Press |date=4 July 2014 |access-date=2 October 2022 |archive-date=2 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221002121050/https://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/04/the-black-hundreds-the-most-important-russian-group-now-active-in-ukraine/ |url-status=live }}

• Chetniks
• Ku Klux Klan

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• Laqueur, Walter. Black Hundred: The Rise Of The Russian Extreme Right (1993)
• Donald C. Rawson. Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905 (1995)

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20051210021749/http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/article_1062821.php/Black_Hundreds_live_again Black Hundreds Live Again, news article on the celebrations of the Black Hundreds' 100th anniversary in Russia]

{{Russian nationalism}}

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