Military Action in Securing and Restoring Order during the Pogroms in Bessarabia in 1903 and 1905

The Russian Empire, an autocratic state with strong remnants of feudal caste law, was based on a legal system that aimed to intimidate the citizenry in order to defend and preserve the existing anachronistic social order. Various specialized state institutions were responsible for the security of the regime and internal order, among which the armed forces. The tsarist authorities widely used military units in the fight against mass demonstrations and the preservation of public order. In this paper, based on the vast new documentary material from the national archives of the Republic of Moldova, we will demonstrate the actions of the military units in order to save the Jewish population of Bessarabia during the pogroms of 1905 and 1907.