Pogroms were common in Russia. The Czarist government was in a state of disintegration due to a lack of social reform and an antequated society. The traditional method of dealing with governmental disintegration is to find scapegoats. The Jews were selected as scapegoats. Pogroms, often led by Cossack "hundreds" murdered perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people, most of which were Jews. This was discussed in the book "The Fixer" by Bernard Melamed, and made into the 1968 film of the same title "The Fixer". Blood libel cases were used to excite public hatred. "Nationalist" leaders such as Petalura and Daniken led pogroms against unarmed Jews. For many Jews of this period, the last thing they saw was a "Tachanka" (<<Тачанка>>) above: a wagon armed with a machine gun. The photo above is of a "Tachanka" in the "Museum of the Revolution" in Moscow. Not all Russians were taken in by Czarist propaganda and realized that pogroms against Jews and "Blood Libel" trials were really an attack upon the majority of Russians, using Jews as a diversion of convenience.