Siedlce pogrom

It was part of a wave of pogroms in Russia and controlled territories (such as the Kingdom of Poland), in the larger context of the widespread unrest.

In the larger context of the widespread unrest it was the site of socialist and Polish patriotic agitation and demonstrations (organized by Polish Socialist Party and Jewish Bund),[2] and the government desired to make a vivid response to the Bloody Wednesday, a series of attacks on government officials organized by PPS that took place barely a months earlier, and other similar events.

[6][14] Some sources also report the involvement of Black Hundreds, which had no native presence in the Kingdom of Poland, and would have had to have been brought in by the authorities from the Empire proper.

[7] The official story spun by Russian propaganda was that the events in Siedlce were triggered by "revolutionaries", whose plot has been discovered and put down by the police and the army.

[17] OB PPS carried out a successful assassination of one of high-ranking Russian officials involved in organizing the Siedlce pogrom, Colonel Obruczew, in December of that year.

[22] Polish and Jewish deputies to the Russian parliament (the Duma) demanded an investigation, which eventually reached the conclusion that the events were caused by some soldiers acting without official orders.

[6][14][20] In particular, the fact that official investigation of the events in Siedlce and Białystok had to conclude that they were not the fault of local populace, but of the Russian army (even if the blame was laid on disobedient soldiers), represented a major loss of face for the government.